Simulations of light scalar mesons on the lattice and related difficulties

TL;DR

This paper reviews lattice simulation techniques for light scalar mesons, highlighting challenges like scattering states and discussing methods to extract meson masses despite these difficulties.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the current methods and preliminary results in lattice simulations of light scalar mesons, addressing key computational challenges.

Findings

Scattering states often dominate scalar correlators at light quark masses.

Unphysical approximations can lead to large or negative scattering contributions.

Various techniques are listed for extracting scalar meson masses amidst scattering states.

Abstract

I review the lattice simulations of light scalar mesons with quark-antiquark and tetraquark interpolating fields. Several difficulties which complicate the extraction of scalar meson masses from the scalar correlators are pointed out. One of the major difficulties is the presence of the two-pseudoscalar scattering states, which often dominate the correlator at light quark masses. In the simulations with unphysical approximations such scattering contributions are even more disturbing since they are often large and sometimes negative. Techniques which allow extraction of scalar meson masses in presence of scattering states are listed. Preliminary results of various lattice collaborations are presented.