Radiative corrections to decay amplitudes in lattice QCD

The precision of lattice QCD computations of many quantities has reached such a precision that isospin-breaking corrections, including electromagnetism, must be included if further progress is to be made in extracting fundamental information, such as the values of Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements, from experimental measurements. We discuss the framework for including radiative corrections in leptonic and semileptonic decays of hadrons, including the treatment of infrared divergences. We briefly review isospin breaking in leptonic decays and present the first numerical results for the ratio $\Gamma(K_{\mu2})/\Gamma(\pi_{\mu2})$ in which these corrections have been included. We also discuss the additional theoretical issues which arise when including electromagnetic corrections to semileptonic decays, such as $K_{\ell3}$ decays. The separate definition of strong isospin-breaking effects and those due to electromagnetism requires a convention. We define and advocate conventions based on hadronic schemes, in which a chosen set of hadronic quantities, hadronic masses for example, are set equal in QCD and in QCD+QED. This is in contrast with schemes which have been largely used to date, in which the renormalised $\alpha_s(\mu)$ and quark masses are set equal in QCD and in QCD+QED in some renormalisation scheme and at some scale $\mu$.Comment: Presented at the 36th Annual International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice2018), Michigan State University, July 22nd - 28th 201

Scaling of a large-scale simulation of synchronous slow-wave and asynchronous awake-like activity of a cortical model with long-range interconnections

Cortical synapse organization supports a range of dynamic states on multiple spatial and temporal scales, from synchronous slow wave activity (SWA), characteristic of deep sleep or anesthesia, to fluctuating, asynchronous activity during wakefulness (AW). Such dynamic diversity poses a challenge for producing efficient large-scale simulations that embody realistic metaphors of short- and long-range synaptic connectivity. In fact, during SWA and AW different spatial extents of the cortical tissue are active in a given timespan and at different firing rates, which implies a wide variety of loads of local computation and communication. A balanced evaluation of simulation performance and robustness should therefore include tests of a variety of cortical dynamic states. Here, we demonstrate performance scaling of our proprietary Distributed and Plastic Spiking Neural Networks (DPSNN) simulation engine in both SWA and AW for bidimensional grids of neural populations, which reflects the modular organization of the cortex. We explored networks up to 192x192 modules, each composed of 1250 integrate-and-fire neurons with spike-frequency adaptation, and exponentially decaying inter-modular synaptic connectivity with varying spatial decay constant. For the largest networks the total number of synapses was over 70 billion. The execution platform included up to 64 dual-socket nodes, each socket mounting 8 Intel Xeon Haswell processor cores @ 2.40GHz clock rates. Network initialization time, memory usage, and execution time showed good scaling performances from 1 to 1024 processes, implemented using the standard Message Passing Interface (MPI) protocol. We achieved simulation speeds of between 2.3x10^9 and 4.1x10^9 synaptic events per second for both cortical states in the explored range of inter-modular interconnections.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, 4 table

fB and fBs with maximally twisted Wilson fermions

We present a lattice QCD calculation of the heavy-light decay constants fB and fBs performed with Nf = 2 maximally twisted Wilson fermions, at four values of the lattice spacing. The decay constants have been also computed in the static limit and the results are used to interpolate the observables between the charmand the infinite-mass sectors, thus obtaining the value of the decay constants at the physical b quark mass. Our preliminary results are fB = 191(14)MeV, fBs = 243(14)MeV, fBs/ fB = 1.27(5). They are in good agreement with those obtained with a novel approach, recently proposed by our Collaboration (ETMC), based on the use of suitable ratios having an exactly known static limit

Isospin-breaking corrections to the muon magnetic anomaly in Lattice QCD

In this contribution we present a lattice calculation of the leading-order electromagnetic and strong isospin-breaking (IB) corrections to the quark-connected hadronic-vacuum-polarization (HVP) contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. The results are obtained adopting the RM123 approach in the quenched-QED approximation and using the QCD gauge configurations generated by the ETM Collaboration with $N_f = 2+1+1$ dynamical quarks, at three values of the lattice spacing ($a \simeq 0.062, 0.082, 0.089$ fm), at several lattice volumes and with pion masses between $\simeq 210$ and $\simeq 450$ MeV. After the extrapolations to the physical pion mass and to the continuum and infinite-volume limits the contributions of the light, strange and charm quarks are respectively equal to $\delta a_\mu^{\rm HVP}(ud) = 7.1 ~ (2.5) \cdot 10^{-10}$, $\delta a_\mu^{\rm HVP}(s) = -0.0053 ~ (33) \cdot 10^{-10}$ and $\delta a_\mu^{\rm HVP}(c) = 0.0182 ~ (36) \cdot 10^{-10}$. At leading order in $\alpha_{em}$ and $(m_d - m_u) / \Lambda_{QCD}$ we obtain $\delta a_\mu^{\rm HVP}(udsc) = 7.1 ~ (2.9) \cdot 10^{-10}$, which is currently the most accurate determination of the IB corrections to $a_\mu^{\rm HVP}$.Comment: Invited talk at the 9th International Workshop on Chiral Dynamics (CD18), Durham, North Carolina (USA), 17-21 September 2018. 11 pages, 4 figure

HVP contribution of the light quarks to the muon (g−2)(g - 2) including isospin-breaking corrections with Twisted-Mass fermions

We present a preliminary lattice calculation of the leading-order electromagnetic and strong isospin-breaking corrections to the Hadronic Vacuum Polarization (HVP) contribution of the light quarks to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. The results are obtained in the quenched-$QED$ approximation using the $QCD$ gauge configurations generated by the European Twisted Mass Collaboration (ETMC) with $N_f = 2 + 1 + 1$ dynamical quarks, at three values of the lattice spacing varying from $0.089$ to $0.062 ~ mboxfm$, at several lattice volumes and with pion masses in the range $M_pi simeq 220 div 490 ~ mboxMeV$