Accumulating evidence for nonstandard leptonic decays of D_s mesons

The measured rate for D_s -> l nu decays, where l is a muon or tau, is larger than the standard model prediction, which relies on lattice QCD, at the 3.8 sigma level. We discuss how robust the theoretical prediction is, and we show that the discrepancy with experiment may be explained by a charged Higgs boson or a leptoquark.Comment: 4 pages; v2 conforms with PRL versio

Continuing Progress on a Lattice QCD Software Infrastructure

We report on the progress of the software effort in the QCD Application Area of SciDAC. In particular, we discuss how the software developed under SciDAC enabled the aggressive exploitation of leadership computers, and we report on progress in the area of QCD software for multi-core architectures.Comment: 5 Pages, to appear in the Proceedings of SciDAC 2008 conference, (Seattle, July 13-17, 2008), Conference Poster Presentation Proceeding

Application of heavy-quark effective theory to lattice QCD: III. Radiative corrections to heavy-heavy currents

We apply heavy-quark effective theory (HQET) to separate long- and short-distance effects of heavy quarks in lattice gauge theory. In this paper we focus on flavor-changing currents that mediate transitions from one heavy flavor to another. We stress differences in the formalism for heavy-light currents, which are discussed in a companion paper, showing how HQET provides a systematic matching procedure. We obtain one-loop results for the matching factors of lattice currents, needed for heavy-quark phenomenology, such as the calculation of zero-recoil form factors for the semileptonic decays $B\to D^{(*)}l\nu$. Results for the Brodsky-Lepage-Mackenzie scale $q^*$ are also given.Comment: 35 pages, 17 figures. Program LatHQ2QCD to compute matching one-loop coefficients available at http://theory.fnal.gov/people/kronfeld/LatHQ2QCD

Confining Configurations in QCD and Relation to Rigid Strings

The gauge field configurations of QCD gauge fields in the infrared regime are obtained by magnetic symmetry condition. The effective dual action exhibits dual Meissner effect with quarks included. A string representation of this action corresponds to rigid string.Comment: 3 pages, Latex file, usepackage fleqn, espcrc2. Talk given in the parallel session of the XVIII International Sympposium on Lattice Field Theory, August 2000, held at Bangalore, Indi

Unquenching effects on the coefficients of the L\"uscher-Weisz action

The effects of unquenching on the perturbative improvement coefficients in the Symanzik action are computed within the framework of L\"uscher-Weisz on-shell improvement. We find that the effects of quark loops are surprisingly large, and their omission may well explain the scaling violations observed in some unquenched studies.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, uses revtex4; version to appear in Phys.Rev.

Disappearance of the Abrikosov vortex above the deconfining phase transition in SU(2) lattice gauge theory

We calculate the solenoidal magnetic monopole current and electric flux distributions at finite temperature in the presence of a static quark antiquark pair. The simulation was performed using SU(2) lattice gauge theory in the maximal Abelian gauge. We find that the monopole current and electric flux distributions are quite different below and above the finite temperature deconfining phase transition point and agree with predictions of the Ginzburg-Landau effective theory.Comment: 12 pages, Revtex Latex, 6 figures - ps files will be sent upon reques

Scaling Study of the Leptonic Decay Constants of Heavy-Light Mesons: A Consumers Report on Improvement Factors

A high statistics calculation, performed at $\beta =5.74,\;6.00$ and $6.26$, enables us to study the variation of the leptonic decay constants $f_P$ of heavy pseudoscalar mesons with the lattice spacing $a$. We observe only a weak $a$ dependence when the standard $\sqrt{2\kappa}$ normalization is used for the quark fields, whereas application of the Kronfeld-Mackenzie normalization induces a stronger variation with $a$. Increasing the meson mass from $1.1GeV$ to $2.3GeV$ this situation becomes even more pronounced.Comment: Lattice 93, 3 pages Latex, 2 postscript figures (epsf style