The strange and charm quark contributions to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon from lattice QCD

We describe a new technique (published in Phys. Rev. D89 114501) to determine the contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon coming from the hadronic vacuum polarisation using lattice QCD. Our method uses Pade approximants to reconstruct the Adler function from its derivatives at $q^2=0$. These are obtained simply and accurately from time-moments of the vector current-current correlator at zero spatial momentum. We test the method using strange quark correlators calculated on MILC Collaborations $n_f = 2+1+1$ HISQ ensembles at multiple values of the lattice spacing, multiple volumes and multiple light sea quark masses (including physical pion mass configurations). We find the (connected) contribution to the anomalous moment from the strange quark vacuum polarisation to be $a^s_mu=53.41(59)times 10^{-10}$, and the contribution from charm quarks to be $a^c_mu=14.42(39)times 10^{-10}$ - 1% accuracy is achieved for the strange quark contribution. The extension of our method to the light quark contribution and to that from the quark-line disconnected diagram is straightforward.

The B and B_s Meson Decay Constants from Lattice QCD

We present a new determination of the B and B_s meson decay constants using NRQCD b-quarks, HISQ light and strange valence quarks and the MILC collaboration N_f=2+1 lattices. The new calculations improve on HPQCDs earlier work with NRQCD b-quarks by replacing AsqTad with HISQ valence quarks, by including a more chiral MILC fine ensemble in the analysis, and by employing better tuned quark masses and overall scale. We find f_B = 0.191(9)GeV, f_{B_s} = 0.228(10)GeV and f_{B_s}/f_B = 1.188(18). Combining the new value for f_{B_s}/f_B with a recent very precise determination of the B_s meson decay constant based on HISQ b-quarks, f_{B_s} = 0.225(4)GeV, leads to f_B = 0.189(4)GeV. With errors of just 2.1% this represents the most precise f_B available today.

Neutral B Meson Mixing in Unquenched Lattice QCD

We study $B_d$ and $B_s$ mixing in unquenched lattice QCD employing the MILC collaboration gauge configurations that include u, d, and s sea quarks based on the improved staggered quark (AsqTad) action and a highly improved gluon action. We implement the valence light quarks also with the AsqTad action and use the nonrelativistic NRQCD action for the valence b quark. We calculate hadronic matrix elements necessary for extracting CKM matrix elements from experimental measurements of mass differences $Delta M_d$ and $Delta M_s$. We find $xi = f_{B_s} sqrt{hat{B}_{B_s}} / f_{B_d} sqrt{hat{B}_{B_d}} = 1.258(33)$, $f_{B_d} sqrt{hat{B}_{B_d}} = 216(15)$ MeV and $f_{B_s} sqrt{hat{B}_{B_s}} = 266(18)$ MeV. We also update previous results for decay constants and obtain $f_{B_d} = 190(13)$ MeV, $f_{B_s} = 231(15)$ MeV and $f_{B_s}/f_{B_d} = 1.226(26)$. The new lattice results lead to updated values for the ratio of CKM matrix elements $|V_{td}|/|V_{ts}|$ and for the Standard Model prediction for $Br(B_s rightarrow mu^+ mu^-)$ with reduced errors. We determine $|V_{td}|/|V_{ts}| = 0.214(1)(5)$ and $Br(B_s rightarrow mu^+ mu^-) = 3.19(19) times 10^{-9}$.