One-loop lattice artifacts of a dynamical charm quark

TL;DR

This paper calculates one-loop lattice artifacts caused by a dynamical charm quark in lattice QCD, showing that these effects are smaller than in pure gauge theory, supporting the feasibility of including dynamical charm quarks.

Contribution

It provides a perturbative analysis of discretization effects from a dynamical charm quark in lattice QCD for several observables, demonstrating their manageable size.

Findings

Cutoff effects from dynamical charm quarks are smaller than in pure gauge theory.

Perturbative results suggest including dynamical charm quarks is feasible.

Analysis covers static quark force and running coupling in the Schrödinger functional.

Abstract

For a few observables in O(a) improved lattice QCD, we compute discretization effects arising from the vacuum polarization of a heavy quark at one-loop order. In particular, the force between static quarks, the running coupling in the Schrodinger functional and a related quantity, {\bar \upsilon}, are considered. Results show that the cutoff effects of a dynamical charm quark are typically smaller than those present in the pure gauge theory. This perturbative result is a good indication that dynamical charm quarks are feasible already now.