We present results of lattice QCD simulations with mass-degenerate up and down and mass-split strange and charm (N f = 2 + 1 + 1) dynamical quarks using Wilson twisted mass fermions at maximal twist. The tuning of the strange and charm quark masses is performed at two values of the lattice spacing a ≈ 0.078 fm and a ≈ 0.086 fm with lattice sizes ranging from L ≈ 1.9 fm to L ≈ 2.8 fm. We measure with high statistical precision the light pseudoscalar mass m PS and decay constant f PS in a range 270 m PS 510 MeV and determine the low energy parameters f 0 andl 3,4 of SU(2) chiral perturbation theory. We use the two values of the lattice spacing, several lattice sizes as well as different values of the light, strange and charm quark masses to explore the systematic effects. A first study of discretisation effects in light-quark observables and a comparison to N f = 2 results are performed.

We present a lattice QCD computation of the b-quark mass, the B and B_s decay constants, the B-mixing bag parameters for the full four-fermion operator basis as well as determinations for \xi and f_{Bq}\sqrt{B_i^{(q)}} extrapolated to the continuum limit and to the physical pion mass. We used N_f = 2 twisted mass Wilson fermions at four values of the lattice spacing with pion masses ranging from 280 to 500 MeV. Extrapolation in the heavy quark mass from the charm to the bottom quark region has been carried out on ratios of physical quantities computed at nearby quark masses, exploiting the fact that they have an exactly known infinite mass limit. Our results are m_b(m_b, \overline{\rm{MS}})=4.29(12) GeV, f_{Bs}=228(8) MeV, f_{B}=189(8) MeV and f_{Bs}/f_B=1.206(24). Moreover with our results for the bag-parameters we find \xi=1.225(31), B_1^{(s)}/B_1^{(d)}=1.01(2), f_{Bd}\sqrt{\hat{B}_{1}^{(d)}} = 216(10) MeV and f_{Bs}\sqrt{\hat{B}_{1}^{(s)}} = 262(10) MeV. We also computed the bag parameters for the complete basis of the four-fermion operators which are required in beyond the SM theories. By using these results for the bag parameters we are able to provide a refined Unitarity Triangle analysis in the presence of New Physics, improving the bounds coming from B_{(s)}-\bar B_{(s)} mixing

We discuss in general the construction of gauge-invariant non-local meson operators on the lattice. We use such operators to study the $P$- and $D$-wave mesons as well as hybrid mesons in quenched QCD, with quark masses near the strange quark mass. The resulting spectra are compared with experiment for the orbital excitations. For the states produced by gluonic excitations (hybrid mesons) we find evidence of mixing for non-exotic quantum numbers. We give predictions for masses of the spin-exotic hybrid mesons with $J^{PC}=1^{-+},\ 0^{+-}$, and $2^{+-}$.Comment: 31 pages, LATEX, 8 postscript figures. Reference adde

We present results of dynamical simulations of N f = 2 degenerate Wilson twisted mass quarks at maximal twist in the range of pseudo scalar masses 300 MeV m PS 550 MeV. Reaching such small masses was made possible owing to a recently developed variant of the HMC algorithm. The simulations are performed at one value of the lattice spacing a 0.1 fm. In order to have O(a) improvement and aiming at small residual O(a 2 ) cutoff effects, the theory is tuned to maximal twist by requiring the vanishing of the untwisted quark mass. Precise results for the pseudo scalar decay constant and the pseudo scalar mass are confronted with chiral perturbation theory predictions and the low energy constants F ,l 3 andl 4 are evaluated with small statistical errors.

We present a comprehensive investigation of light meson physics using maximally twisted mass fermions for N f = 2 mass-degenerate quark flavours. By employing four values of the lattice spacing, spatial lattice extents ranging from 2.0 fm to 2.5 fm and pseudo scalar masses in the range 280 m PS 650 MeV we control the major systematic effects of our calculation. This enables us to confront our N f = 2 data with SU(2) chiral perturbation theory and extract low energy constants of the effective chiral Lagrangian and derived quantities, such as the light quark mass.