We present the first direct lattice calculation of the isovector sea-quark parton distributions using the formalism developed recently by one of the authors. We use $N_f=2+1+1$ HISQ lattice gauge ensembles (generated by MILC Collaboration) and clover
valence fermions with pion mass 310 MeV. We are able to obtain the qualitative features of the nucleon sea flavor structure even at this large pion mass: We observe violation of the Gottfried sum rule, indicating $overline{d}(x) > overline{u}(x)$; the helicity distribution obeys $Delta overline{u}(x) > Delta overline{d}(x)$, which is consistent with the STAR data at large and small leptonic pseudorapidity.
Study of the hadronic matrix elements can provide not only tests of the QCD sector of the Standard Model (in comparing with existing experiments) but also reliable low-energy hadronic quantities applicable to a wide range of beyond-the-Standard Model
scenarios where experiments or theoretical calculations are limited or difficult. On the QCD side, progress has been made in the notoriously difficult problem of addressing gluonic structure inside the nucleon, reaching higher-$Q^2$ region of the form factors, and providing a complete picture of the proton spin. However, even further study and improvement of systematic uncertainties are needed. There are also proposed calculations of higher-order operators in the neutron electric dipole moment Lagrangian, which would be useful when combined with effective theory to probe BSM. Lattice isovector tensor and scalar charges can be combined with upcoming neutron beta-decay measurements of the Fierz interference term and neutrino asymmetry parameter to probe new interactions in the effective theory, revealing the scale of potential new TeV particles. Finally, I revisit the systematic uncertainties in recent calculations of $g_A$ and review prospects for future calculations.
We apply black-box methods, i.e. where the performance of the method does not depend upon initial guesses, to extract excited-state energies from Euclidean-time hadron correlation functions. In particular, we extend the widely used effective-mass met
hod to incorporate multiple correlation functions and produce effective mass estimates for multiple excited states. In general, these excited-state effective masses will be determined by finding the roots of some polynomial. We demonstrate the method using sample lattice data to determine excited-state energies of the nucleon and compare the results to other energy-level finding techniques.
We calculate the light hadron spectrum in full QCD using two plus one flavor Asqtad sea quarks and domain wall valence quarks. Meson and baryon masses are calculated on a lattice of spatial size $L approx 2.5$texttt{fm}, and a lattice spacing of $a a
pprox 0.124$texttt{fm}, for pion masses as light as $m_pi approx 300$texttt{MeV}, and compared with the results by the MILC collaboration with Asqtad valence quarks at the same lattice spacing. Two- and three-flavor chiral extrapolations of the baryon masses are performed using both continuum and mixed-action heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. Both the three-flavor and two-flavor functional forms describe our lattice results, although the low-energy constants from the next-to-leading order SU(3) fits are inconsistent with their phenomenological values. Next-to-next-to-leading order SU(2) continuum formulae provide a good fit to the data and yield and extrapolated nucleon mass consistent with experiment, but the convergence pattern indicates that even our lightest pion mass may be at the upper end of the chiral regime. Surprisingly, our nucleon masses are essentially lineaer in $m_pi$ over our full range of pion masses, and we show this feature is common to all recent dynamical calculations of the nucleon mass. The origin of this linearity is not presently understood, and lighter pion masses and increased control of systematic errors will be needed to resolve this puzzling behavior.
