Equation of state at non-zero baryon density based on lattice QCD

We employ the lattice QCD data on Taylor expansion coefficients to extend our previous parametrization of the equation of state to finite baryon density. When we take into account lattice spacing and quark mass dependence of the hadron masses, the Taylor coefficients at low temperature are equal to those of hadron resonance gas. Parametrized lattice equation of state can thus be smoothly connected to the hadron resonance gas equation of state at low temperatures.     

Lattice quantum chromodynamics and baryon-baryon interactions

After briefly reviewing the theoretical concepts and numerical methods in lattice QCD, recent simulation results of the hadron masses and hadron interactions with nearly physical quark masses are presented. Special emphasis is placed on the baryon-baryon interactions on the basis of the HAL QCD method where the integro-differential equation for the equal-time Nambu–Bethe–Salpeter amplitude plays a key role to bridge a gap between the multi-baryon correlation and the scattering observable such as the phase shift.     

Hadron resonance gas and nonperturbative QCD vacuum at finite temperature

Nonperturbative QCD vacuum with two light quarks at finite temperature was studied in a hadron resonance-gas model. Temperature dependences of the quark and gluon condensates in the confined phase were obtained. It is shown that the quark condensate and one-half (chromoelectric component) of the gluon condensate are evaporated at the same temperature corresponding to the quark-hadron phase transition. With allowance for the temperature shift of hadron masses, the critical temperature was found to be T _c ?190 MeV.     

Quenched light hadron spectrum

We present results of a large-scale simulation for the flavor nonsinglet light hadron spectrum in quenched lattice QCD with the Wilson quark action. Hadron masses are calculated at four values of lattice spacing in the range a approximately 0.1-0.05 fm on lattices with a physical extent of 3 fm at five quark masses corresponding to m(pi)/m(rho) approximately 0.75-0.4. The calculated spectrum in the continuum limit shows a systematic deviation from experiment, though the magnitude of deviation is contained within 11%. Results for decay constants and light quark masses are also reported.     

Hadron spectroscopy in lattice QCD

A Monte Carlo computation of meson and hadron spectroscopy within lattice QCD is made. We give a detailed discussion of the statistical and systematic errors of the results and analyze the present limitations of our approach. The results are in agreement with the observed spectrum. We also estimate the values of up, down and strange quark masses.     

A Minimal Dynamical Scheme for “Understanding” Hadronic Widths

Using a quark model scheme of ‘least Dynamics’, an inclusive determination of the total widths of mesons and baryons is proposed via the following mechanism: There exists a short (breathing) mode for the temporary dissociation of a hadron into a pair of “qausi-free” quarks and/or diquarks which eventually hadronize with certainty, so that the requisite widths correspond to this “first stage” dissociation itself. A detailed model (described elsewhere) based on the momentum dependence of the quark's mass function m(p) suggests a significant mass reduction of these quasi-free quarks w.r.t their “constituent” values m(O). Using this logic, a phenomenological coupling scheme for the meson-(quasifree)quark-vertex function is derived from Schwinger's Partial (broken chiral). Symmetry which incorporates the conservation of isospin, baryonic charge and hypercharge with respective ‘gauge mesons’ rho, omega, phi. A very similar structure is found for baryon couplings to quark (q)-diquark (D) pairs, with the same overall coupling constant (gs) for both systems. Its tentative identification with the QCD value yields a surprisingly good pattern of agreement with data for both hadron types, using two “quasi-free” masses (m_ud and m_s) as inputs, with the corresponding diquark masses determined additively.     

Direct photon production beyond leading order in QCD

The significance of the quark-quark scattering process (quark+quark→quark+quark+photon) for the production of large-q_T real photons is discussed in the framework of perturbative QCD. To extract the finite contribution of this process to the differential cross section dσ/dy d²q_T (hadron 1+hadron 2→photon+anything) we define the gluon distribution and the quark-to-photon fragmentation function beyond the leading approximation. The calculations are performed consistently in the dimensional regularization scheme. Our numerical estimates show the resulting finite qq→qqγ contribution to be a small (order α_s/2π) correction in comparison with the basic QCD subprocesses.     

Calculation of the hadron spectrum in lattice QCD

We present Monte Carlo results for the hadron mass-spectrum in lattice SU(3) using the Wilson action and the quenched approximation. We show that on a 6³· 10 lattice at β=6.0, there exist long-lived metastable states of the gauge-field, characterized by the eigenvalues of Z(3) and associated with the first-order deconfining phase transition. The hadron masses are very different in these state if the quark paths that wind around the lattice are not removed. We demonstrate two methods which eliminate a significant fraction of such quark paths. The final results for hadron masses do not agree with the experimental values. We find that the π and ?, as well as the proton and the Δ are degenerate.     

Lattice QCD thermodynamic results with improved staggered fermions

We present results on the QCD equation of state, obtained with two different improved dynamical staggered fermion actions and almost physical quark masses. Lattice cut-off effects are discussed in detail as results for three different lattice spacings are available now, i.e. results have been obtained on lattices with temporal extent of N _τ =4,6 and 8. Furthermore we discuss the Taylor expansion approach to non-zero baryon chemical potential and present the isentropic equation of state on lines of constant entropy per baryon number.     

Hadron correlators and the structure of the quark propagator

The structure of the quark propagator of QCD in a confining background is not known. We make an ansatz for it, as hinted by a particular mechanism for confinement, and analyze its implications in the meson and baryon correlators. We connect the various terms in the Källen-Lehmann representation of the quark propagator with appropriate combinations of hadron correlators, which may ultimately be calculated in lattice QCD. Furthermore, using the positivity of the path integral measure for vector like theories, we reanalyze some mass inequalities in our formalism. A curiosity of the analysis is that, the exotic components of the propagator (axial and tensor), produce terms in the hadron correlators which, if not vanishing in the gauge field integration, lead to violations of fundamental symmetries. The non observation of these violations implies restrictions in the space-time structure of the contributing gauge field configurations. In this way, lattice QCD can help us analyze the microscopic structure of the mechanisms for confinement.Supported in part by CICYT (AEN91-0234) and DGICYT grant (PB91-0119-C02-01)     

Ratio of a strange quark mass ms to up or down quark mass mu,d predicted by a quark propagator in the frameworkof the chiral perturbation theory

Based on the fully dressed quark propagator and chiral perturbation theory, we study the ratio of the strange quark mass m_s to up or down quark mass m_u,d. The ratio is related to the determination of quark masses which are fundamental input parameters of QCD Lagrangian in the Standard Model of particle physics and can not be directly measured since the quark is confined within a hadron. An accurate determination of these QCD free parameters is extremely important for both phenomenological and theoretical applications. We begin with a brief introduction to the non-perturbation QCD theory, and then study the mass ratio in the framework of the chiral perturbation theory (χ PT) with a parameterized fully dressed quark propagator which describes confining fully dressed quark propagation and is analytic everywhere in the finite complex p²-plane and has no Lehmann representation so there are no quark production thresholds in any theoretical calculations of observable data. Our prediction for the ratio m_s/m_u,d is consistent with other model predictions such as Lattice QCD, instanton model, QCD sum rules and the empirical values used widely in the literature. As a by-product of this study, our theoretical results, together with other predictions of physical quantities that used this quark propagator in our previous publications, clearly show that the parameterized form of the fully dressed quark propagator is an applicable and reliable approximation to the solution of the Dyson-Schwinger Equation of quark propagator in the QCD.     

Heavy Quark Hadron Mass Scale

Without the spin interactions the hadron masses within a multiplet are degenerate. The light quark hadron degenerate multiplet mass spectrum is extended from the 3 quark ground state multiplets at J^P = 0⁻, ½⁺, 1⁻ to include the excited states which follow the spinorial decomposition of SU(2) × SU(2). The mass scales for the 4, 5, 6,… quark hadrons are obtained from the degenerate multiplet mass m₀/M = n²/α with n = 4, 5, 6,… The 4, 5, 6,… quark hadron degenerate multiplet masses follow by splitting of the heavy quark mass scales according to the spinorial decomposition of SU(2) × SU(2).     

Decay constants of pseudoscalar and vector mesons with improved holographic wavefunction

We calculate the decay constants of light and heavy-light pseudoscalar and vector mesons with improved soft-wall holographic wavefuntions,which take into account the effects of both quark masses and dynamical spins.We find that the predicted decay constants,especially for the ratio f V/f P,based on light-front holographic QCD,can be significantly improved,once the dynamical spin effects are taken into account by introducing the helicity-dependent wavefunctions.We also perform detailed χ~2 analyses for the holographic parameters(i.e.the mass-scale parameterκ and the quark masses),by confronting our predictions with the data for the charged-meson decay constants and the meson spectra.The fitted values for these parameters are generally in agreement with those obtained by fitting to the Regge trajectories.At the same time,most of our results for the decay constants and their ratios agree with the data as well as the predictions based on lattice QCD and QCD sum rule approaches,with only a few exceptions observed.     

The spatial string tension and dimensional reduction in QCD

The spatial string tension is calculated in 2+1 flavor QCD with a physical strange quark mass and almost physical light quark masses on lattices with N_t=4,6 and 8. The results are compared with predictions of dimensionally reduced QCD. They suggest that dimensional reduction works also in the presence of light dynamical quarks down to temperatures of about 1.5T_c.     

Coupled Channel Approach to S-Wave Hyperonic Interactions from Lattice QCD

We studied hyperonic interactions by lattice QCD simulation throuth coupled channel formalism. Our approach to baryon-baryon interactions is deriving a potential from inverting Schrödinger equation using Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter (NBS) wave function simulated on the lattice. The quark mass dependences and flavor SU(3) breaking effects of the potential matrix are also discussed by comparing with results of gauge configurations with different quark masses. Our numerical results are obtained from three ensembles of 2+1 flavor QCD gauge configurations, which corresponds to m _π ~ 700, 570 and 410 MeV, provided by the PACS-CS Collaboration.     

Quark loops and spin-flip effects in pomeron exchange

On the basis of QCD at large distances with taking account of some nonperturbative properties of the theory, the possibility of spin-flip effects in high energy hadron processes at fixed momenta transfer is investigated. It is shown that the diagrams with the quark loops in QCD at large distances may lead to the spin-flip amplitude growing ass fors→∞,t-fixed. The confirmation of this result is obtained by calculations of the nonleading contributions from quark loops int-channel exchange in QED up to the end. Physical mechaisms leading to that behavour of the spin-flip amplitude is discussed. So we conclude that the pomeron has a complicated spin structure.     

Constraints on m s and ε′/ε from lattice quantum chromodynamics

Results for light quark masses obtained from lattice QCD simulations are compared and contrasted with other determinations. Relevance of these results to estimates of ε′/ε is discussed.