Mass renormalisation for improved staggered quarks

Improved staggered quark actions are designed to suppress flavour changing strong interactions. We discuss the perturbation theory for this type of actions and show the improvements to reduce the quark mass renormalisation compared to naive staggered quarks. The renormalisations are of similar size as for Wilson quarks.Comment: LaTeX, 3 pages, Lattice2001(spectrum

Scale Setting for αs\alpha_s Beyond Leading Order

We present a general procedure for applying the scale-setting prescription of Brodsky, Lepage and Mackenzie to higher orders in the strong coupling constant \alphas. In particular, we show how to apply this prescription when the leading coefficient or coefficients in a series in \alphas are anomalously small. We give a general method for computing an optimum scale numerically, within dimensional regularization, and in cases when the coefficients of a series are known. We find significant corrections to the scales for $R_{e^+ e^-}$, $\Gamma(B \to X_u e \bar{\nu})$, $\Gamma(t \to b W)$, and the ratios of the quark pole to \MSbar and lattice bare masses.Comment: Lattice 2000 (Perturbation Theory), 5 pages, 7 figures, LaTe

Irreducible Multiplets of Three-Quark Operators on the Lattice: Controlling Mixing under Renormalization

High luminosity accelerators have greatly increased the interest in semi-exclusive and exclusive reactions involving nucleons. The relevant theoretical information is contained in the nucleon wavefunction and can be parametrized by moments of the nucleon distribution amplitudes, which in turn are linked to matrix elements of three-quark operators. These can be calculated from first principles in lattice QCD. However, on the lattice the problems of operator mixing under renormalization are rather involved. In a systematic approach we investigate this issue in depth. Using the spinorial symmetry group of the hypercubic lattice we derive irreducibly transforming three-quark operators, which allow us to control the mixing pattern.Comment: 13 page

QCD on Coarse Lattices

We show that the perturbatively-improved gluon action for QCD, once it is tadpole-improved, gives accurate results even with lattice spacings as large as 0.4~fm. {\em No\/} tuning of the couplings is required. Using this action and lattice spacing, we obtain a static potential that is rotationally invariant to within a few percent, the spin-averaged charmonium spectrum accurate to within 30--40~MeV, and scaling to within 5--10\%. We demonstrate that simulations on coarse lattices are several orders of magnitude less costly than simulations using current methods.Comment: 4 page

Perturbation theory vs. simulation for tadpole improvement factors in pure gauge theories

We calculate the mean link in Landau gauge for Wilson and improved SU(3) anisotropic gauge actions, using two loop perturbation theory and Monte Carlo simulation employing an accelerated Langevin algorithm. Twisted boundary conditions are employed, with a twist in all four lattice directions considerably improving the (Fourier accelerated) convergence to an improved lattice Landau gauge. Two loop perturbation theory is seen to predict the mean link extremely well even into the region of commonly simulated gauge couplings and so can be used remove the need for numerical tuning of self-consistent tadpole improvement factors. A three loop perturbative coefficient is inferred from the simulations and is found to be small. We show that finite size effects are small and argue likewise for (lattice) Gribov copies and double Dirac sheets.Comment: 13 pages of revtex

F_B from moving B mesons

We show results for the B meson decay constant calculated both for B mesons at rest and those with non-zero momentum and using both the temporal and spatial components of the axial vector current. It is an important check of lattice systematic errors that all these determinations of f_B should agree. We also describe how well different smearings for the B meson work at non-zero momentum - the optimal smearing has a narrow smearing for the b quark.Comment: Lattice2001(heavyquark

Semileptonic B Decays from an NRQCD/D234 Action

Semileptonic B decays are studied on quenched anisotropic lattices using Symanzik improved glue, NRQCD heavy quark and D234 light quark actions. We employ constrained fits to extract ground state contributions to two- and three-point correlators. Results for the B --> pi, l nubar decay form factors are compared with previous lattice results. We find that our systematic errors (excluding quenching errors) are dominated by chiral extrapolation uncertainties.Comment: Lattice2002(Heavy quark physics

Lattice QCD on Small Computers

We demonstrate that lattice QCD calculations can be made $10^3$--$10^6$ times faster by using very coarse lattices. To obtain accurate results, we replace the standard lattice actions by perturbatively-improved actions with tadpole-improved correction terms that remove the leading errors due to the lattice. To illustrate the power of this approach, we calculate the static-quark potential, and the charmonium spectrum and wavefunctions using a desktop computer. We obtain accurate results that are independent of the lattice spacing and agree well with experiment.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figs incl as LaTex pictures Minor additions to tables and tex

Improving Lattice Quark Actions

We explore the first stage of the Symanzik improvement program for lattice Dirac fermions, namely the construction of doubler-free, highly improved classical actions on isotropic as well as anisotropic lattices (where the temporal lattice spacing, a_t, is smaller than the spatial one). Using field transformations to eliminate doublers, we derive the previously presented isotropic D234 action with O(a^3) errors, as well as anisotropic D234 actions with O(a^4) or O(a_t^3, a^4) errors. Besides allowing the simulation of heavy quarks within a relativistic framework, anisotropic lattices alleviate potential problems due to unphysical branches of the quark dispersion relation (which are generic to improved actions), facilitate studies of lattice thermodynamics, and allow accurate mass determinations for particles with bad signal/noise properties, like glueballs and P-state mesons. We also show how field transformations can be used to completely eliminate unphysical branches of the dispersion relation. Finally, we briefly discuss future steps in the improvement program.Comment: Tiny changes to agree with version to appear in Nucl. Phys. B (33 pages, LaTeX, 13 eps files

BcB_c Spectroscopy from Lattice QCD

We present first results for $B_c$ spectroscopy using Lattice Non-Relativistic QCD (NRQCD). For the NRQCD action the leading order spin-dependent and next to leading order spin-independent interactions have been included with tadpole-improved coefficients. We use multi-exponential fits to multiple correlation functions to extract ground and excited $S$ states and give accurate values for the $S$ state hyperfine splitting and the P state ($B^{**}_c$) fine structure, including the effects of $^1P_1/^3P_1$ mixing.Comment: 12 pages uuencoded latex file + 1 postscript figur