Physical observables from boundary artifacts: scalar glueball in Yang-Mills theory

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that boundary artifacts in lattice gauge theory simulations can be exploited to efficiently extract scalar glueball properties, with results validated against traditional methods and analyzed through Wilson flow.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using boundary artifacts to determine scalar glueball observables more efficiently than conventional techniques.

Findings

Scalar glueball mass can be extracted from boundary condition simulations.

Results agree with traditional two-point function methods.

Scaling behavior studied via Wilson flow.

Abstract

By relating the functional averages of a generic scalar operator in simulations with Open (O) and Periodic (P) boundary conditions (BCs) respectively for $SU(3)$ lattice gauge theory, we show that the scalar glueball mass and the glueball to vacuum matrix element can be extracted very efficiently from the former. Numerical results are compared with those extracted from the two point function of the time slice energy density (both PBC and OBC). The scaling properties of the mass and the matrix element are studied with the help of Wilson (gradient) flow.