Quarkonium with Unquenched, Improved Staggered Fermions

USQCD Collaboration Project

A.Bazavov, C.Bernard, C.DeTar, M.Di Pierro, A.X.El-Khadra, J.Foley, E.D.Freeland, E.Gámiz, S.Gottlieb, U.M.Heller, J.E.Hetrick, A.S.Kronfeld, J.Laiho, L.Levkova, P.B.Mackenzie, D.Mohler, M.Oktay, J.N.Simone, R.Sugar, D.Toussaint, and R.S. Van de Water

 

Background.

Although the properties of quarkonia are easy to estimate using potential models, they are interesting for lattice QCD for just that reason. Before the advent of good unquenched calculations, potential models enabled one to estimate the effects of the quenched approximation. Such quantities as αs and the heavy quark masses could therefore be obtained with reasonable precision before analogous quantities could be obtained from light quark physics. Unquenched calculations will yield these quan- tities with accuracies limited only by perturbation theory. In current unquenched calculations, they serve several additional important purposes. First, because they are well-understood with potential models, one can expect particular quarkonium proper- ties to be very sensitive to certain correction operators. For example, the splitting of the χc states is expected to be very sensitive to the O(v4) correction ψσ· ∇ × Eψ. Therefore, quarkonium calculations are important test beds for improved actions. Second, quarkonium decays test methods analogous to those of phenomenological crucial heavy-light meson decays: leptonic decays of quarkonia are similar to leptonic decays of heavy-lights, and electromagnetic transitions of quarkonia are similar to semileptonic decays of heavy-lights. Thus, a successful quarkonia program bolsters confidence in the heavy-light program, and hence, lattice CKM determinations. CLEO-c will improve dramatically the accuracy of these charmonium decays over the next couple of years, making our calculations of quarkonium properties timely in their own right.

Abstract to the 2010 proposal.

This proposal is part of a coordinated effort to calculate some of the most important quantities relevant for standard model phenomenology. We propose a study of the masses of heavy quarkonium states below open flavor threshold. Quarkonia are ideal for testing improved heavy-quark actions, and verifying that their uncertainties are well understood. In addition to providing new and precise determinations of heavy-quark masses, comparison with existing and upcoming experimental results will add an important test of lattice QCD, aid in the interpretation of problematic excited quarkonium states, and assist in the discovery of hybrid quarkonium states, both exotic and nonexotic.

 

 

Results from previous support.

Carleton DeTar, April 17, 2010.