High-precision quark masses and QCD coupling from $n_f=4$ lattice QCD

TL;DR

This paper uses lattice QCD with four flavors to precisely determine quark masses and the strong coupling constant, confirming previous results and providing new ratios relevant for GUT models.

Contribution

It presents a novel lattice QCD analysis with four flavors to accurately compute quark masses and the QCD coupling, extending previous three-flavor studies.

Findings

New values for the QCD coupling and charm quark mass.

A nonperturbative ratio of charm to strange quark masses.

Comparison of mass ratios with GUT predictions.

Abstract

We present a new lattice QCD analysis of heavy-quark pseudoscalar-pseudoscalar correlators, using gluon configurations from the MILC collaboration that include vacuum polarization from $u$, $d$, $s$ and $c$~quarks($n_f=4$). We extract new values for the QCD coupling and for the $c$ quark's $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ mass: $\alpha_{\overline{\mathrm{MS}}}(M_Z,n_f=5) = 0.11822(74)$ and $m_c(3\mathrm{GeV}, n_f=4) = 0.9851(63)$GeV. These agree well with our earlier simulations using $n_f=3$ sea quarks, vindicating the perturbative treatment of $c$ quarks in that analysis. We also obtain a new nonperturbative result for the ratio of $c$~and $s$~quark masses: $m_c/m_s=11.652(65)$. This ratio implies $m_s(2\,\mathrm{GeV}, n_f=3)=93.6(8)$MeV when it is combined with our new~$c$~mass. Combining $m_c/m_s$ with our earlier $m_b/m_c$ gives $m_b/m_s=52.55(55)$, which is several standard deviations (but only 4%) away from the Georgi-Jarlskop prediction from certain GUTs. Finally we obtain an $n_f=4$ estimate for $m_b/m_c=4.528(54)$ which agrees well with our earlier $n_f=3$ result. The new ratio implies~$m_b(m_b,n_f=5)=4.162(48)$GeV.