Space station structures and dynamics test program

The design, construction, and operation of a low-Earth orbit space station poses unique challenges for development and implementation of new technology. The technology arises from the special requirement that the station be built and constructed to function in a weightless environment, where static loads are minimal and secondary to system dynamics and control problems. One specific challenge confronting NASA is the development of a dynamics test program for: (1) defining space station design requirements, and (2) identifying the characterizing phenomena affecting the station's design and development. A general definition of the space station dynamic test program, as proposed by MSFC, forms the subject of this report. The test proposal is a comprehensive structural dynamics program to be launched in support of the space station. The test program will help to define the key issues and/or problems inherent to large space structure analysis, design, and testing. Development of a parametric data base and verification of the math models and analytical analysis tools necessary for engineering support of the station's design, construction, and operation provide the impetus for the dynamics test program. The philosophy is to integrate dynamics into the design phase through extensive ground testing and analytical ground simulations of generic systems, prototype elements, and subassemblies. On-orbit testing of the station will also be used to define its capability

Charmonium mass splittings at the physical point

We present results from an ongoing study of mass splittings of the lowest lying states in the charmonium system. We use clover valence charm quarks in the Fermilab interpretation, an improved staggered (asqtad) action for sea quarks, and the one-loop, tadpole-improved gauge action for gluons. This study includes five lattice spacings, 0.15, 0.12, 0.09, 0.06, and 0.045 fm, with two sets of degenerate up- and down-quark masses for most spacings. We use an enlarged set of interpolation operators and a variational analysis that permits study of various low-lying excited states. The masses of the sea quarks and charm valence quark are adjusted to their physical values. This large set of gauge configurations allows us to extrapolate results to the continuum physical point and test the methodology.Comment: 7 pp, 6 figs, Lattice 201

Semileptonic B to D decays at nonzero recoil with 2+1 flavors of improved staggered quarks. An update

The Fermilab Lattice and MILC collaborations are completing a comprehensive program of heavy-light physics on MILC (2+1)-flavor asqtad ensembles with lattice spacings as small as 0.045 fm and light-to-strange-quark mass ratios as low as 1/20. We use the Fermilab interpretation of the clover action for heavy valence quarks and the asqtad action for the light valence quarks. The central goal of the program is to provide ever more exacting tests of the unitarity of the CKM matrix. We present preliminary results for one part of the program, namely the analysis of the semileptonic decay B -> D l nu at nonzero recoil.Comment: 7 pp, 7 figs, Lattice 201

Heavy-quark meson spectrum tests of the Oktay-Kronfeld action

The Oktay-Kronfeld (OK) action extends the Fermilab improvement program for massive Wilson fermions to higher order in suitable power-counting schemes. It includes dimension-six and -seven operators necessary for matching to QCD through order ${\mathrm{O}}(\Lambda^3/m_Q^3)$ in HQET power counting, for applications to heavy-light systems, and ${\mathrm{O}}(v^6)$ in NRQCD power counting, for applications to quarkonia. In the Symanzik power counting of lattice gauge theory near the continuum limit, the OK action includes all ${\mathrm{O}}(a^2)$ and some ${\mathrm{O}}(a^3)$ terms. To assess whether the theoretical improvement is realized in practice, we study combinations of heavy-strange and quarkonia masses and mass splittings, designed to isolate heavy-quark discretization effects. We find that, with one exception, the results obtained with the tree-level-matched OK action are significantly closer to the continuum limit than the results obtained with the Fermilab action. The exception is the hyperfine splitting of the bottom-strange system, for which our statistical errors are too large to draw a firm conclusion. These studies are carried out with data generated with the tadpole-improved Fermilab and OK actions on 500 gauge configurations from one of MILC's $a\approx0.12$~fm, $N_f=2+1$-flavor, asqtad-staggered ensembles.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Scalar Meson Spectroscopy with Lattice Staggered Fermions

With sufficiently light up and down quarks the isovector ($a_0$) and isosinglet ($f_0$) scalar meson propagators are dominated at large distance by two-meson states. In the staggered fermion formulation of lattice quantum chromodynamics, taste-symmetry breaking causes a proliferation of two-meson states that further complicates the analysis of these channels. Many of them are unphysical artifacts of the lattice approximation. They are expected to disappear in the continuum limit. The staggered-fermion fourth-root procedure has its purported counterpart in rooted staggered chiral perturbation theory (rSXPT). Fortunately, the rooted theory provides a strict framework that permits the analysis of scalar meson correlators in terms of only a small number of low energy couplings. Thus the analysis of the point-to-point scalar meson correlators in this context gives a useful consistency check of the fourth-root procedure and its proposed chiral realization. Through numerical simulation we have measured correlators for both the $a_0$ and $f_0$ channels in the ``Asqtad'' improved staggered fermion formulation in a lattice ensemble with lattice spacing $a = 0.12$ fm. We analyze those correlators in the context of rSXPT and obtain values of the low energy chiral couplings that are reasonably consistent with previous determinations.Comment: 23 pp., 3 figs., submitted to Phys. Rev.

Low lying charmonium states at the physical point

We present results for the mass splittings of low-lying charmonium states from a calculation with Wilson clover valence quarks with the Fermilab interpretation on an asqtad sea. We use five lattice spacings and two values of the light sea quark mass to extrapolate our results to the physical point. Sources of systematic uncertainty in our calculation are discussed and we compare our results for the 1S hyperfine splitting, the 1P-1S splitting and the P-wave spin orbit and tensor splittings to experiment.Comment: For the Fermilab Lattice and MILC Collaborations; 7 pages, 6 figures; Contribution to the 32nd International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, 23-28 June, 2014, Columbia University New York, N