Decay constants of B and D mesons from improved relativistic lattice QCD with two flavours of sea quarks

TL;DR

This paper calculates B and D meson decay constants using improved lattice QCD with two dynamical quark flavors, providing new estimates and examining sea quark effects through comparisons with quenched simulations.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed calculation of B and D meson decay constants with Nf=2 dynamical quarks using an improved Wilson action, including a direct comparison with quenched results.

Findings

Decay constants for B and D mesons with Nf=2 are estimated with statistical and systematic errors.

Sea quark effects increase B meson decay constants by approximately 10-15%.

Evidence for sea quark effects on D meson decay constants is less statistically significant.

Abstract

We present a calculation of the B and D meson decay constants in lattice QCD with two (Nf=2) flavours of light dynamical quarks, using an O(a)-improved Wilson action for both light and heavy quarks and a renormalization-group improved gauge action. Simulations are made at three values of lattice spacing a=0.22, 0.16, 0.11 fm and four values of sea quark mass in the range m_PS/m_V \~= 0.8-0.6. Our estimate for the continuum values of the decay constants are fBd = 208(10)(11) MeV, fBs = 250(10)(13)(^{+8}_{-0}) MeV, fDd = 225(14)(14) MeV, fDs = 267(13)(17)(^{+10}_{-0}) MeV for Nf=2 where the statistical and systematic errors are separately listed, and the third error for fBs and fDs show uncertainty of determination of strange quark mass. We also carry out a set of quenched simulations using the same action to make a direct examination of sea quark effects. Taking the ratio of results for Nf=2 and Nf=0, we obtain fb^{Nf=2}/fb^{Nf=0} = 1.11(6), fbs^{Nf=2}/fbs^{Nf=0} = 1.14(5), fd^{Nf=2}/\fd^{Nf=0} = 1.03(6), fds^{Nf=2}/\fds^{Nf=0} = 1.07(5). They show a 10-15% increase in the Nf=2 results over those of Nf=0 for the B meson decay constants, while evidence for such a trend is statistically less clear for the D meson decay constants.