Light Quark Mass Reweighting

We present a systematic study of the effectiveness of light quark mass reweighting. This method allows a single lattice QCD ensemble, generated with a specific value of the dynamical light quark mass, to be used to determine results for other, nearby light dynamical quark masses. We study two gauge field ensembles generated with 2+1 flavors of dynamical domain wall fermions with light quark masses m_l=0.02 (m_\pi=620 MeV) and m_l=0.01 (m_\pi=420 MeV). We reweight each ensemble to determine results which could be computed directly from the other and check the consistency of the reweighted results with the direct results. The large difference between the 0.02 and 0.01 light quark masses suggests that this is an aggressive application of reweighting as can be seen from fluctuations in the magnitude of the reweighting factor by four orders of magnitude. Never-the-less, a comparison of the reweighed topological charge, average plaquette, residual mass, pion mass, pion decay constant, and scalar correlator between these two ensembles shows agreement well described by the statistical errors. The issues of the effective number of configurations and finite sample size bias are discussed. An examination of the topological charge distribution implies that it is more favorable to reweight from heavier mass to lighter quark mass.Comment: 24 pages and 10 figure

The strange quark condensate in the nucleon in 2+1 flavor QCD

We calculate the "strange quark content of the nucleon", , which is important for interpreting the results of some dark matter detection experiments. The method is to evaluate quark-line disconnected correlations on the MILC lattice ensembles, which include the effects of dynamical strange quarks. After continuum and chiral extrapolations, the result is <N |s s_bar |N> = 0.69 +- 0.07(statistical) +- 0.09(systematic), in the modified minimal subtraction scheme (2 GeV), or for the renormalization scheme invariant form, m_s partial{M_N}/partial{m_s} = 59(6)(8) MeV.Comment: Added figures and references, especially for fit range choice. Other changes for clarity. Version to appear in publicatio

Sigma terms from an SU(3) chiral extrapolation

We report a new analysis of lattice simulation results for octet baryon masses in 2+1-flavor QCD, with an emphasis on a precise determination of the strangeness nucleon sigma term. A controlled chiral extrapolation of a recent PACS-CS Collaboration data set yields baryon masses which exhibit remarkable agreement both with experimental values at the physical point and with the results of independent lattice QCD simulations at unphysical meson masses. Using the Feynman-Hellmann relation, we evaluate sigma commutators for all octet baryons. The small statistical uncertainty, and considerably smaller model-dependence, allows a signifcantly more precise determination of the pion-nucleon sigma commutator and the strangeness sigma term than hitherto possible, namely {\sigma}{\pi}N=45 \pm 6 MeV and {\sigma}s = 21 \pm 6 MeV at the physical point.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Search for Higgs Bosons in SUSY Cascade Decays and Neutralino Dark Matter

The Minimal Supersymmetric Extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) is a well motivated theoretical framework, which contains an extended Higgs sector, including a light Higgs with Standard Model-like properties in most of the parameter space. Due to the large QCD background, searches for such a Higgs, decaying into a pair of bottom quarks, is very challenging at the LHC. It has been long realized that the situation may be ameliorated by searching for Higgs bosons in supersymmetric decay chains. Moreover, it has been recently suggested that the bobber decay channel may be observed in standard production channels by selecting boosted Higgs bosons, which may be easily identified from the QCD background. Such boosted Higgs bosons are frequent in the MSSM, since they are produced from decays of heavy colored supersymmetric particles. Previous works have emphasized the possibility of observing boosted Higgs bosons in the light higgsino region. In this work, we study the same question in the regions of parameter space consistent with a neutralino dark matter relic density, analyzing its dependence on the non-standard Higgs boson, slepton and squark masses, as well as on the condition of gaugino mass unification. In general, we conclude that, provided sleptons are heavier than the second lightest neutralinos, the presence of boosted Higgs is a common MSSM feature, implying excellent prospects for observation of the light MSSM Higgs boson in the near future.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures. v2: New Xenon 100 results implemented, version to appear in PR