Light Hadron Spectrum and Quark Masses from Quenched Lattice QCD

TL;DR

This study uses quenched lattice QCD simulations to analyze the light hadron spectrum and quark masses, revealing limitations of the quenched approximation with results deviating from experimental data.

Contribution

First detailed quenched lattice QCD analysis of light hadron spectrum with multiple lattice spacings and quark masses, highlighting quenched approximation failures.

Findings

Quenched chiral singularities supported by pseudoscalar data.

Calculated hadron masses agree with experiment within 10%.

Quenched approximation underestimates meson hyperfine splitting and mass splittings.

Abstract

We present details of simulations for the light hadron spectrum in quenched QCD carried out on the CP-PACS parallel computer. Simulations are made with the Wilson quark action and the plaquette gauge action on 32^3x56 - 64^3x112 lattices at four lattice spacings (a \approx 0.1-0.05 fm) and the spatial extent of 3 fm. Hadronic observables are calculated at five quark masses (m_{PS}/m_V \approx 0.75 - 0.4), assuming the u and d quarks being degenerate but treating the s quark separately. We find that the presence of quenched chiral singularities is supported from an analysis of the pseudoscalar meson data. We take m_\pi, m_\rho and m_K (or m_\phi) as input. After chiral and continuum extrapolations, the agreement of the calculated mass spectrum with experiment is at a 10% level. In comparison with the statistical accuracy of 1-3% and systematic errors of at most 1.7% we have achieved, this demonstrates a failure of the quenched approximation for the hadron spectrum: the meson hyperfine splitting is too small, and the octet masses and the decuplet mass splittings are both smaller than experiment. Light quark masses are calculated using two definitions: the conventional one and the one based on the axial-vector Ward identity. The two results converge toward the continuum limit, yielding m_{ud}=4.29(14)^{+0.51}_{-0.79} MeV. The s quark mass depends on the strange hadron mass chosen for input: m_s = 113.8(2.3)^{+5.8}_{-2.9} MeV from m_K and m_s = 142.3(5.8)^{+22.0}_{-0} MeV from m_\phi, indicating again a failure of the quenched approximation. We obtain \Lambda_{\bar{MS}}^{(0)}= 219.5(5.4) MeV. An O(10%) deviation from experiment is observed in the pseudoscalar meson decay constants.