Twisted mass chiral perturbation theory for 2+1+1 quark flavours

We present results for the masses of pseudoscalar mesons in twisted mass lattice QCD with a degenerate doublet of u and d quarks and a non-degenerate doublet of s and c quarks in the framework of next-to-leading order chiral perturbation theory, including lattice effects up to O(a^2). The masses depend on the two twist angles for the light and heavy sectors. For maximal twist in both sectors, O(a)-improvement is explicitly exhibited. The mixing of flavour-neutral mesons is also discussed, and results in the literature for the case of degenerate s and c quarks are corrected.Comment: LaTeX2e, 12 pages, corrected typo

The difficult doctor? Characteristics of physicians who report frustration with patients: an analysis of survey data

BACKGROUND: Literature on difficult doctor-patient relationships has focused on the "difficult patient." Our objective was to determine physician and practice characteristics associated with greater physician-reported frustration with patients. METHODS: We conducted a secondary analysis of the Physicians Worklife Survey, which surveyed a random national sample of physicians. Participants were 1391 family medicine, general internal medicine, and medicine subspecialty physicians. The survey assessed physician and practice characteristics, including stress, depression and anxiety symptoms, practice setting, work hours, case-mix, and control over administrative and clinical practice. Physicians estimated the percentage of their patients who were "generally frustrating to deal with." We categorized physicians by quartile of reported frustrating patients and compared characteristics of physicians in the top quartile to those in the other three quartiles. We used logistic regression to model physician characteristics associated with greater frustration. RESULTS: In unadjusted analyses, physicians who reported high frustration with patients were younger (p < 0.001); worked more hours per week (p = 0.041); and had more symptoms of depression, stress, and anxiety (p < 0.004 for all). In the final model, factors independently associated with high frustration included age < 40 years, work hours > 55 per week, higher stress, practice in a medicine subspeciality, and greater number of patients with psychosocial problems or substance abuse. CONCLUSION: Personal and practice characteristics of physicians who report high frustration with patients differ from those of other physicians. Understanding factors contributing to physician frustration with patients may allow us to improve the quality of patient-physician relationships

Determining matrix elements and resonance widths from finite volume: the dangerous mu-terms

The standard numerical approach to determining matrix elements of local operators and width of resonances uses the finite volume dependence of energy levels and matrix elements. Finite size corrections that decay exponentially in the volume are usually neglected or taken into account using perturbation expansion in effective field theory. Using two-dimensional sine-Gordon field theory as "toy model" it is shown that some exponential finite size effects could be much larger than previously thought, potentially spoiling the determination of matrix elements in frameworks such as lattice QCD. The particular class of finite size corrections considered here are mu-terms arising from bound state poles in the scattering amplitudes. In sine-Gordon model, these can be explicitly evaluated and shown to explain the observed discrepancies to high precision. It is argued that the effects observed are not special to the two-dimensional setting, but rather depend on general field theoretic features that are common with models relevant for particle physics. It is important to understand these finite size corrections as they present a potentially dangerous source of systematic errors for the determination of matrix elements and resonance widths.Comment: 26 pages, 13 eps figures, LaTeX2e fil

Individual Eigenvalue Distributions for the Wilson Dirac Operator

We derive the distributions of individual eigenvalues for the Hermitian Wilson Dirac Operator D5 as well as for real eigenvalues of the Wilson Dirac Operator DW. The framework we provide is valid in the epsilon regime of chiral perturbation theory for any number of flavours Nf and for non-zero low energy constants W6, W7, W8. It is given as a perturbative expansion in terms of the k-point spectral density correlation functions and integrals thereof, which in some cases reduces to a Fredholm Pfaffian. For the real eigenvalues of DW at fixed chirality nu this expansion truncates after at most nu terms for small lattice spacing "a". Explicit examples for the distribution of the first and second eigenvalue are given in the microscopic domain as a truncated expansion of the Fredholm Pfaffian for quenched D5, where all k-point densities are explicitly known from random matrix theory. For the real eigenvalues of quenched DW at small "a" we illustrate our method by the finite expansion of the corresponding Fredholm determinant of size nu.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures; v2: typos corrected, refs added and discussion of W6 and W7 extende

The preliminary lattice QCD calculation of κ\kappa meson decay width

We present a direct lattice QCD calculation of the $\kappa$ meson decay width with the s-wave scattering phase shift for the isospin $I=1/2$ pion-kaon ($\pi K$) system. We employ a special finite size formula, which is the extension of the Rummukainen-Gottlieb formula for the $\pi K$ system in the moving frame, to calculate the scattering phase, which indicates a resonance around $\kappa$ meson mass. Through the effective range formula, we extract the effective $\kappa \to \pi K$ coupling constant $g_{\kappa \pi K} = 4.54(76)$ GeV and decay width $\Gamma = 293 \pm 101$ MeV. Our simulations are done with the MILC gauge configurations with $N_f=2+1$ flavors of the "Asqtad" improved staggered dynamical sea quarks on a $16^3\times48$ lattice at $(m_\pi + m_K) / m_\kappa \approx 0.8$ and lattice spacing $a \approx 0.15$ fm.Comment: To make it concise. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1110.1422, but much of v1 text overlap with articles by same and other authors remove

Orbifold equivalence for finite density QCD and effective field theory

In the large N_c limit, some apparently different gauge theories turn out to be equivalent due to large N_c orbifold equivalence. We use effective field theory techniques to explore orbifold equivalence, focusing on the specific case of a recently discovered relation between an SO(2N_c) gauge theory and QCD. The equivalence to QCD has been argued to hold at finite baryon chemical potential, \mu_B, so long as one deforms the SO(2N_c) theory by certain "double-trace" terms. The deformed SO(2N_c) theory can be studied without a sign problem in the chiral limit, in contrast to SU(N_c) QCD at finite \mu_B. The purpose of the double-trace deformation in the SO(2N_c) theory is to prevent baryon number symmetry from breaking spontaneously at finite density, which is necessary for the equivalence to large N_c QCD to be valid. The effective field theory analysis presented here clarifies the physical significance of double-trace deformations, and strongly supports the proposed equivalence between the deformed SO(2N_c) theory and large N_c QCD at finite density.Comment: 39 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. v2: Minor typo fixes and clarification

Lattice QCD determination of m_b, f_B and f_Bs with twisted mass Wilson fermions

We present a lattice QCD determination of the b quark mass and of the B and B_s decay constants, performed with N_f=2 twisted mass Wilson fermions, by simulating at four values of the lattice spacing. In order to study the b quark on the lattice, two methods are adopted in the present work, respectively based on suitable ratios with exactly known static limit and on the interpolation between relativistic data, evaluated in the charm mass region, and the static point, obtained by simulating the HQET on the lattice. The two methods provide results in good agreement. For the b quark mass in the MSbar scheme and for the decay constants we obtain m_b(m_b)=4.29(14) GeV, f_B=195(12) MeV, f_Bs=232(10) MeV and f_Bs/f_B=1.19(5). As a byproduct of the analysis we also obtain the results for the f_D and f_Ds decay constants: f_D=212(8) MeV, f_Ds=248(6) MeV and f_Ds/f_D=1.17(5).Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables. Added appendix showing the agreement of the data for the ratios with the HQE prediction. Matching JHEP published versio

D-meson decay constants and a check of factorization in non-leptonic B-decays

We compute the vector meson decay constants fD*, fDs* from the simulation of twisted mass QCD on the lattice with Nf = 2 dynamical quarks. When combining their values with the pseudoscalar D(s)-meson decay constants, we were able (i) to show that the heavy quark spin symmetry breaking effects with the charm quark are large, fDs*/fDs = 1.26(3), and (ii) to check the factorization approximation in a few specific B-meson non-leptonic decay modes. Besides our main results, fD* = 278 \pm 13 \pm 10 MeV, and fDs* = 311 \pm 9 MeV, other phenomenologically interesting results of this paper are: fDs*/fD* = 1.16 \pm 0.02 \pm 0.06, fDs*/fD = 1.46 \pm 0.05 \pm 0.06, and fDs/fD* = 0.89 \pm 0.02 \pm 0.03. Finally, we correct the value for B(B0 \rightarrow D+ pi-) quoted by PDG, and find B(B0 \rightarrow D+ pi-) = (7.8 \pm 1.4) \times 10-7. Alternatively, by using the ratios discussed in this paper, we obtain B(B0 \rightarrow D+ pi-) = (8.3 \pm 1.0 \pm 0.8)\times10-7.Comment: 16 pages, 4 eps figure

Random Matrix Theory for the Hermitian Wilson Dirac Operator and the chGUE-GUE Transition

We introduce a random two-matrix model interpolating between a chiral Hermitian (2n+nu)x(2n+nu) matrix and a second Hermitian matrix without symmetries. These are taken from the chiral Gaussian Unitary Ensemble (chGUE) and Gaussian Unitary Ensemble (GUE), respectively. In the microscopic large-n limit in the vicinity of the chGUE (which we denote by weakly non-chiral limit) this theory is in one to one correspondence to the partition function of Wilson chiral perturbation theory in the epsilon regime, such as the related two matrix-model previously introduced in refs. [20,21]. For a generic number of flavours and rectangular block matrices in the chGUE part we derive an eigenvalue representation for the partition function displaying a Pfaffian structure. In the quenched case with nu=0,1 we derive all spectral correlations functions in our model for finite-n, given in terms of skew-orthogonal polynomials. The latter are expressed as Gaussian integrals over standard Laguerre polynomials. In the weakly non-chiral microscopic limit this yields all corresponding quenched eigenvalue correlation functions of the Hermitian Wilson operator.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures; v2 typos corrected, published versio