A lattice QCD study of the strong decay width and coupling constant of decuplet baryons to an octet baryon - pion state is presented. The transfer matrix method is used to obtain the overlap of lattice states with decuplet baryon quantum numbers on t
he one hand and octet baryon-pion quantum numbers on the other as an approximation to the matrix element of the corresponding transition. By making use of leading order effective field theory, the coupling constants, as well as the widths for the various decay channels are determined. The transitions studied are $ Delta to pi ,N$, $Sigma^* to Lambda,pi$, $Sigma^* to Sigma,pi$ and $Xi^* to Xi,pi$. We obtain results for two ensembles of $N_f=2+1$ dynamical fermion configurations, one using domain wall valence quarks on a staggered sea at a pion mass of $350,mathrm{MeV}$ and a box size of $3.4,mathrm{fm}$ and a second one using domain wall sea and valence quarks at pion mass $180,mathrm{MeV}$ and box size $4.5,mathrm{fm}$.
Results on the electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon using twisted mass fermion configurations are presented. These include a gauge field ensemble simulated with two degenerate light quarks yielding a pion mass of around 130 MeV, as well as two
ensembles that include strange and charm quarks in the sea yielding pion masses of 210 MeV and 373 MeV. Details of the methods used and systematic errors are discussed, such as noise reduction techniques and the effect of excited states contamination.
We present a stochastic method for the calculation of baryon three-point functions that is more versatile compared to the typically used sequential method. We analyze the scaling of the error of the stochastically evaluated three-point function with
the lattice volume and find a favorable signal-to-noise ratio suggesting that our stochastic method can be used efficiently at large volumes to compute hadronic matrix elements.
We study the light scalar mesons a_0(980) and kappa using N_f = 2+1+1 flavor lattice QCD. In order to probe the internal structure of these scalar mesons, and in particular to identify, whether a sizeable tetraquark component is present, we use a lar
ge set of operators, including diquark-antidiquark, mesonic molecule and two-meson operators. The inclusion of disconnected diagrams, which are technically rather challenging, but which would allow us to extend our work to e.g. the f_0(980) meson, is introduced and discussed.
We carry out an exploratory study of the isospin one a0(980) and the isospin one-half kappa scalar mesons using Nf=2+1+1 Wilson twisted mass fermions at one lattice spacing. The valence strange quark is included as an Osterwalder-Seiler fermion with
mass tuned so that the kaon mass matches the corresponding mass in the unitary Nf=2+1+1 theory. We investigate the internal structure of these mesons by using a basis of four-quark interpolating fields. We construct diquark-diquark and molecular-typecinterpolating fields and analyse the resulting correlation matrices keeping only connected contributions. For both channels, the low-lying spectrum is found to be consistent with two-particle scattering states. Therefore, our analysis shows no evidence for an additional state that can be interpreted as either a tetraquark or a tightly-bound molecular state.
We present first results on the axial and pseudoscalar $Delta$ form factors. The analysis is carried out in the quenched approximation where statistical errors are small and the lattice set-up can be investigated relatively quickly. We also present a
n analysis with a hybrid action using staggered sea quarks and domain-wall valence fermions.
We develop the formalism for the evaluation of density-density correlators in lattice QCD that includes techniques for the computation of the all-to-all propagators involved. A novel technique in this context is the implementation of the one-end tric
k in the meson sector. Density-density correlators provide a gauge invariant definition for the hadron wave function and yield information on hadron deformation. We evaluate density-density correlators using two degenerate flavors of dynamical Wilson fermions for the pion, the rho-meson, the nucleon and the $Delta$. Using the one-end trick we obtain results that clearly show deformation of the rho-meson.
Hadron wave functions and form factors can be extracted using four-point correlators. Stochastic techniques are used to estimate the all to all propagators, which are required for the exact calculation of four-point functions. We apply the so called
one-end trick to evaluate meson four-point functions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique in the case of the pion and the $rho$-meson where we extract their charge distribution, as well as the form factors.
