We present results for the nucleon electromagnetic form factors, including the momentum transfer dependence and derived quantities (charge radii and magnetic moment). The analysis is performed using O(a) improved Wilson fermions in Nf=2 QCD measured
on the CLS ensembles. Particular focus is placed on a systematic evaluation of the influence of excited states in three-point correlation functions, which lead to a biased evaluation, if not accounted for correctly. We argue that the use of summed operator insertions and fit ansatze including excited states allow us to suppress and control this effect. We employ a novel method to perform joint chiral and continuum extrapolations, by fitting the form factors directly to the expressions of covariant baryonic chiral effective field theory. The final results for the charge radii and magnetic moment from our lattice calculations include, for the first time, a full error budget. We find that our estimates are compatible with experimental results within their overall uncertainties.
We present preliminary results on the axial form factor $G_A(Q^2)$ and the induced pseudoscalar form factor $G_P(Q^2)$ of the nucleon. A systematic analysis of the excited-state contributions to form factors is performed on the CLS ensemble `N6 with
$m_pi = 340 text{MeV}$ and lattice spacing $a sim 0.05 text{fm}$. The relevant three-point functions were computed with source-sink separations ranging from $t_s sim 0.6 text{fm}$ to $t_s sim 1.4 text{fm}$. We observe that the form factors suffer from non-trivial excited-state contributions at the source-sink separations available to us. It is noted that naive plateau fits underestimate the excited-state contributions and that the method of summed operator insertions correctly accounts for these effects.
We study the ability of a variety of fitting techniques to extract the ground state matrix elements of the vector current from ratios of nucleon three- and two-point functions that contain contaminations from excited states. Extending our high-statis
tics study of nucleon form factors, we are able to demonstrate that the treatment of excited-state contributions in conjunction with approaching the physical pion mass has a significant impact on the $Q^2$-dependence of the form factors.
We report on our calculation of the nucleon axial charge gA in QCD with two flavours of dynamical quarks. A detailed investigation of systematic errors is performed, with a particular focus on contributions from excited states to three-point correlat
ion functions. The use of summed operator insertions allows for a much better control over such contamination. After performing a chiral extrapolation to the physical pion mass, we find gA=1.223 +/- 0.063 (stat) +0.035 -0.060 (syst), in good agreement with the experimental value.
Lattice simulations of QCD have produced precise estimates for the masses of the lowest-lying hadrons which show excellent agreement with experiment. By contrast, lattice results for the vector and axial vector form factors of the nucleon show signif
icant deviations from their experimental determination. We present results from our ongoing project to compute a variety of form factors with control over all systematic uncertainties. In the case of the pion electromagnetic form factor we employ partially twisted boundary conditions to extract the pion charge radius directly from the linear slope of the form factor near vanishing momentum transfer. In the nucleon sector we focus specifically on the possible contamination from contributions of higher excited states. We argue that summed correlation functions offer the possibility of eliminating this source of systematic error. As an illustration of the method we discuss our results for the axial charge, gA, of the nucleon.
We present an update on our on-going project to compute hadronic observables for Nf=2 flavours of O(a) improved Wilson fermions at small lattice spacings. The procedure to determine the lattice scale via the mass of the Omega baryon is described. Fur
thermore we present preliminary results for the pion form factor computed using twisted boundary conditions, and report on the implementation of a novel approach to determine the contribution of the hadronic vacuum polarisation to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon.
