Calculating the hadronic vacuum polarization and leading hadronic contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment with improved staggered quarks

We present a lattice calculation of the hadronic vacuum polarization and the lowest-order hadronic contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment, a_\mu = (g-2)/2, using 2+1 flavors of improved staggered fermions. A precise fit to the low-q^2 region of the vacuum polarization is necessary to accurately extract the muon g-2. To obtain this fit, we use staggered chiral perturbation theory, including the vector particles as resonances, and compare these to polynomial fits to the lattice data. We discuss the fit results and associated systematic uncertainties, paying particular attention to the relative contributions of the pions and vector mesons. Using a single lattice spacing ensemble (a=0.086 fm), light quark masses as small as roughly one-tenth the strange quark mass, and volumes as large as (3.4 fm)^3, we find a_\mu^{HLO} = (713 \pm 15) \times 10^{-10} and (748 \pm 21) \times 10^{-10} where the error is statistical only and the two values correspond to linear and quadratic extrapolations in the light quark mass, respectively. Considering systematic uncertainties not eliminated in this study, we view this as agreement with the current best calculations using the experimental cross section for e^+e^- annihilation to hadrons, 692.4 (5.9) (2.4)\times 10^{-10}, and including the experimental decay rate of the tau lepton to hadrons, 711.0 (5.0) (0.8)(2.8)\times 10^{-10}. We discuss several ways to improve the current lattice calculation.Comment: 44 pages, 4 tables, 17 figures, more discussion on matching the chpt calculation to lattice calculation, typos corrected, refs added, version to appear in PR

Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory at Next-to-Leading Order

We study taste and Euclidean rotational symmetry violation for staggered fermions at nonzero lattice spacing using staggered chiral perturbation theory. We extend the staggered chiral Lagrangian to O(a^2 p^2), O(a^4) and O(a^2 m), the orders necessary for a full next-to-leading order calculation of pseudo-Goldstone boson masses and decay constants including analytic terms. We then calculate a number of SO(4) taste-breaking quantities, which involve only a small subset of these NLO operators. We predict relationships between SO(4) taste-breaking splittings in masses, pseudoscalar decay constants, and dispersion relations. We also find predictions for a few quantities that are not SO(4) breaking. All these results hold also for theories in which the fourth-root of the fermionic determinant is taken to reduce the number of quark tastes; testing them will therefore provide evidence for or against the validity of this trick.Comment: 39 pages, 6 figures (v3: corrected technical error in enumeration of a subset of NLO operators; final conclusions unchanged

Current Physics Results from Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory

We review several results that have been obtained using lattice QCD with the staggered quark formulation. Our focus is on the quantities that have been calculated numerically with low statistical errors and have been extrapolated to the physical quark mass limit and continuum limit using staggered chiral perturbation theory. We limit our discussion to a brief introduction to staggered quarks, and applications of staggered chiral perturbation theory to the pion mass, decay constant, and heavy-light meson decay constants.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, commissioned review article, to appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.

K to pi and K to 0 in 2+1 Flavor Partially Quenched Chiral Perturbation Theory

We calculate results for K to pi and K to 0 matrix elements to next-to-leading order in 2+1 flavor partially quenched chiral perturbation theory. Results are presented for both the Delta I=1/2 and 3/2 channels, for chiral operators corresponding to current-current, gluonic penguin, and electroweak penguin 4-quark operators. These formulas are useful for studying the chiral behavior of currently available 2+1 flavor lattice QCD results, from which the low energy constants of the chiral effective theory can be determined. The low energy constants of these matrix elements are necessary for an understanding of the Delta I=1/2 rule, and for calculations of epsilon'/epsilon using current lattice QCD simulations.Comment: 43 pages, 2 figures, uses RevTeX, added and updated reference

The kaon B-parameter from unquenched mixed action lattice QCD

We present a preliminary calculation of B_K using domain-wall valence quarks and 2+1 flavors of improved staggered sea quarks. Both the size of the residual quark mass, which measures the amount of chiral symmetry breaking, and of the mixed meson splitting Delta_mix, a measure of taste-symmetry breaking, show that discretization effects are under control in our mixed action lattice simulations. We show preliminary data for pseudoscalar meson masses, decay constants and B_K. We discuss general issues associated with the chiral extrapolation of lattice data, and, as an example, present a preliminary chiral and continuum extrapolation of f_pi. The quality of our data shows that the good chiral properties of domain-wall quarks, in combination with the light sea quark masses and multiple lattice spacings available with the MILC staggered configurations, will allow for a precise determination of B_K.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. Presented at the XXV International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 30 - August 4 2007, Regensburg, German

Order of the Chiral and Continuum Limits in Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory

Durr and Hoelbling recently observed that the continuum and chiral limits do not commute in the two dimensional, one flavor, Schwinger model with staggered fermions. I point out that such lack of commutativity can also be seen in four-dimensional staggered chiral perturbation theory (SChPT) in quenched or partially quenched quantities constructed to be particularly sensitive to the chiral limit. Although the physics involved in the SChPT examples is quite different from that in the Schwinger model, neither singularity seems to be connected to the trick of taking the nth root of the fermion determinant to remove unwanted degrees of freedom ("tastes"). Further, I argue that the singularities in SChPT are absent in most commonly-computed quantities in the unquenched (full) QCD case and do not imply any unexpected systematic errors in recent MILC calculations with staggered fermions.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure. v3: Spurious symbol, introduced by conflicting tex macros, removed. Clarification of discussion in several place

Heavy-Light Semileptonic Decays in Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory

We calculate the form factors for the semileptonic decays of heavy-light pseudoscalar mesons in partially quenched staggered chiral perturbation theory (\schpt), working to leading order in $1/m_Q$, where $m_Q$ is the heavy quark mass. We take the light meson in the final state to be a pseudoscalar corresponding to the exact chiral symmetry of staggered quarks. The treatment assumes the validity of the standard prescription for representing the staggered ``fourth root trick'' within \schpt by insertions of factors of 1/4 for each sea quark loop. Our calculation is based on an existing partially quenched continuum chiral perturbation theory calculation with degenerate sea quarks by Becirevic, Prelovsek and Zupan, which we generalize to the staggered (and non-degenerate) case. As a by-product, we obtain the continuum partially quenched results with non-degenerate sea quarks. We analyze the effects of non-leading chiral terms, and find a relation among the coefficients governing the analytic valence mass dependence at this order. Our results are useful in analyzing lattice computations of form factors $B\to\pi$ and $D\to K$ when the light quarks are simulated with the staggered action.Comment: 53 pages, 8 figures, v2: Minor correction to the section on finite volume effects, and typos fixed. Version to be published in Phys. Rev.