Dynamical Twisted Mass Fermions with Light Quarks

We study the lattice cutoff ($a$) and quark mass dependences of pion masses and decay constants in the $N_f = 2$ twisted mass QCD, using the Wilson chiral perturbation theory to the next leading order (NLO). In order to investigate the region near zero quark mass, we introduce the power counting scheme where $O(a^2, am)$ terms are included in the tree level effective Lagrangian. At the NLO of this power counting scheme, we calculate the charged pion mass and decay constant as...

Quantum Chromodynamics on a lattice with Wilson fermions and a chirally twisted mass term for two degenerate quark flavours is considered in the framework of chiral perturbation theory. The pion masses and decay constants are calculated in next-to-leading order including terms linear in the lattice spacing a. We treat both unquenched and partially quenched QCD. We also discuss the phase structure of twisted mass lattice QCD.

We present results for light quark masses from a systematic lattice QCD study with two degenerate flavors of dynamical quarks. Simulations are made with a renormalization-group improved gauge action and a mean-field improved clover quark action for sea quark masses corresponding to $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V} \approx 0.8$--0.6 and the lattice spacing $a=0.22$--0.11 fm. In the continuum limit we find $m_{ud}^{\bar{MS}}(2 {\rm GeV})=3.44^{+0.14}_{-0.22}$ MeV using the $\pi$ and $\rho...

We present results for the masses of pseudoscalar mesons in twisted mass lattice QCD with a degenerate doublet of u and d quarks and a non-degenerate doublet of s and c quarks in the framework of next-to-leading order chiral perturbation theory, including lattice effects up to O(a^2). The masses depend on the two twist angles for the light and heavy sectors. For maximal twist in both sectors, O(a)-improvement is explicitly exhibited. The mixing of flavour-neutral mesons is al...

We show at the example of the matrix element between pion states of a twist-2, non-singlet operator that Wilson twisted mass fermions allow to compute this phenomenologically relevant quantitiy at small pseudo scalar masses of O(270 MeV). In the quenched approximation, we investigate the scaling behaviour of this observable that is derived from a 3-point function by applying two definitions of the critical mass and find a scaling compatible with the expected O(a^2) behaviour ...

Lattice QCD simulations directly at physical masses of dynamical light, strange and charm quarks are highly desirable especially to remove systematic errors due to chiral extrapolations. However such simulations are still challenging. We discuss the adaption of efficient algorithms, like multi-grid methods or higher order integrators, within the molecular dynamic steps of the Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm, that are enabling simulations of a new set of gauge ensembles by the Ex...

We present results for the light, strange and charm quark masses using $N_f=2+1+1$ twisted mass fermion ensembles at three values of the lattice spacing, including two ensembles simulated with the physical value of the pion mass. The analysis is done both in the meson and baryon sectors. The difference in the mean values found in the two sectors is included as part of the systematic error. The presentation is based on the work of Ref. [1], where more details can be found.

We compute the static-light baryon spectrum with N_f = 2 flavors of sea quarks using Wilson twisted mass lattice QCD. As light valence quarks we consider quarks, which have the same mass as the sea quarks with corresponding pion masses in the range 340 MeV < m_PS < 525 MeV, as well as partially quenched quarks, which have the mass of the physical s quark. We extract masses of states with isospin I = 0, 1/2, 1, with strangeness S = 0, -1, -2, with angular momentum of the light...

We present results on the mass of the nucleon and the Delta using two dynamical degenerate twisted mass quarks and the tree-level Symanzik improved gauge action. The evaluation is performed at four quark masses corresponding to a pion mass in the range of about 300-600 MeV on lattices of 2.1-2.7 fm. We check for cut-off effects by evaluating these baryon masses on lattices of spatial size 2.1 fm at beta=3.9 and beta=4.05 and on a lattice of 2.4 fm at beta=3.8. The values we f...

Algorithmic and technical progress achieved over the last few years makes QCD simulations with light dynamical quarks much faster than before. As a result lattices with pions as light as 250--300 MeV can be simulated with the present generation of computers. I review recent conceptual and numerical progress in this field, with particular emphasis on results obtained and difficulties encountered in simulations with significantly smaller quark masses with respect to previous co...