We have simulated QCD using 2 þ 1 flavors of domain wall quarks and the Iwasaki gauge action on a ð2:74 fmÞ 3 volume with an inverse lattice scale of a À1 ¼ 1:729ð28Þ GeV. The up and down (light) quarks are degenerate in our calculations and we have used four values for the ratio of light quark masses to the strange (heavy) quark mass in our simulations: 0.217, 0.350, 0.617, and 0.884. We have measured pseudoscalar meson masses and decay constants, the kaon bag parameter B K , and vector meson couplings. We have used SU(2) chiral perturbation theory, which assumes only the up and down quark masses are small, and SU(3) chiral perturbation theory to extrapolate to the physical values for the light quark masses. While next-to-leading order formulas from both approaches fit our data for light quarks, we find the higher-order corrections for SU(3) very large, making such fits unreliable. We also find that SU(3) does not fit our data when the quark masses are near the physical strange quark mass. Thus, we rely on SU(2) chiral perturbation theory for accurate results. We use the masses of the baryon, and the and K mesons to set the lattice scale and determine the quark masses. We then find f ¼ 124:1ð3:6Þ stat  ð6:9Þ syst MeV, f K ¼ 149:6ð3:6Þ stat ð6:3Þ syst MeV, and f K =f ¼ 1:205ð0:018Þ stat ð0:062Þ syst . Using nonperturbative renormalization to relate lattice regularized quark masses to regularization independent momentum scheme masses, and perturbation theory to relate these to MS, we find m MS ud ð2 GeVÞ ¼ 3:72ð0:16Þ stat ð0:33Þ ren ð0:18Þ syst MeV, m MS s ð2 GeVÞ ¼ 107:3ð4:4Þ stat ð9:7Þ ren ð4:9Þ syst MeV, and mud : ms ¼ 1:28:8ð0:4Þ stat ð1:6Þ syst . For the kaon bag parameter, we find B MS K ð2 GeVÞ ¼ 0:524ð0:010Þ stat ð0:013Þ ren  ð0:025Þ syst . Finally, for the ratios of the couplings of the vector mesons to the vector and tensor currents (f V and f T V , respectively) in the MS scheme at 2 GeV we obtain f T =f ¼ 0:687ð27Þ; f T K à =f K à ¼ 0:712ð12Þ, and f T =f ¼ 0:750ð8Þ.

QCD lattice simulations with 2+1 flavours (when two quark flavours are mass degenerate) typically start at rather large up-down and strange quark masses and extrapolate first the strange quark mass and then the up-down quark mass to its respective physical value. Here we discuss an alternative method of tuning the quark masses, in which the singlet quark mass is kept fixed. Using group theory the possible quark mass polynomials for a Taylor expansion about the flavour symmetric line are found, first for the general 1 + 1 + 1 flavour case and then for the 2 + 1 flavour case. This ensures that the kaon always has mass less than the physical kaon mass. This method of tuning quark masses then enables highly constrained polynomial fits to be used in the extrapolation of hadron masses to their physical values. Numerical results for the 2 + 1 flavour case confirm the usefulness of this expansion and an extrapolation to the physical pion mass gives hadron mass values to within a few percent of their experimental values. Singlet quantities remain constant which allows the lattice spacing to be determined from hadron masses (without necessarily being at the physical point). Furthermore an extension of this programme to include partially quenched results is given.

We present physical results obtained from simulations using 2+1 flavors of domain wall quarks and the Iwasaki gauge action at two values of the lattice spacing a, (a −1 = 1.73 (3) GeV and a −1 = 2.28 (3) GeV). On the coarser lattice, with 24 3 × 64 × 16 points (where the 16 corresponds to L s , the extent of the 5 th dimension inherent in the domain wall fermion (DWF) formulation

Abstract. Elastic electromagnetic nucleon form factors have long provided vital information about the structure and composition of these most basic elements of nuclear physics. The form factors are a measurable and physical manifestation of the nature of the nucleons' constituents and the dynamics that binds them together. Accurate form factor data obtained in recent years using modern experimental facilities has spurred a significant reevaluation of the nucleon and pictures of its structure; e.g., the role of quark orbital angular momentum, the scale at which perturbative QCD effects should become evident, the strangeness content, and meson-cloud effects. We provide a succinct survey of the experimental studies and theoretical interpretation of nucleon electromagnetic form factors.

By combining the constraints of charge symmetry with new chiral extrapolation techniques and recent low mass lattice QCD simulations of the individual quark contributions to the magnetic moments of the nucleon octet, we obtain a precise determination of the strange magnetic moment of the proton. The result, namely G s M = −0.046 ± 0.019 µN , is consistent with the latest experimental measurements but an order of magnitude more precise. This poses a tremendous challenge for future experiments.

In the framework of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), parton distribution functions (PDFs) quantify how the momentum and spin of a hadron are divided among its quark and gluon constituents. Two main approaches exist to determine PDFs. The first approach, based on QCD factorization theorems, realizes a QCD analysis of a suitable set of hard-scattering measurements, often using a variety of hadronic observables. The second approach, based on first-principle operator definitions of PDFs, uses lattice QCD to compute directly some PDF-related quantities, such as their moments. Motivated by recent progress in both approaches, in this document we present an overview of lattice-QCD and globalanalysis techniques used to determine unpolarized and polarized proton PDFs and their moments. We provide benchmark numbers to validate present and future lattice-QCD calculations and we illustrate how they could be used to reduce the PDF uncertainties in current unpolarized and polarized global analyses. This document represents a first step towards establishing a common language between the two communities, to foster dialogue and to further improve our knowledge of PDFs.The detailed understanding of the inner structure of nucleons is an active research field with phenomenological implications in high-energy, hadron, nuclear and astroparticle physics. Within quantum chromodynamics (QCD), information on this structure -specifically on how the nucleon's momentum and spin are divided among quarks and gluons -is encoded in parton distribution functions (PDFs).There exist two main methods to determine PDFs. 1 The first method is the global QCD analysis [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. It is based on QCD factorization of physical observables, i.e. the fact that a class of hard-scattering cross-sections can be expressed as a convolution between short-distance, perturbative, matrix elements and long-distance, nonperturbative, PDFs. By combining a variety of available hard-scattering experimental data with state-of-the-art perturbative calculations, complete PDF sets, including the gluon and various combinations of quark flavors, are currently determined for protons, in both the unpolarized [13][14][15][16][17] and the polarized [18][19][20][21] case.Recent progress in global QCD analyses has been driven, on the one hand, by the increasing availability of a wealth of high-precision measurements from Jefferson Lab, HERA, RHIC, the Tevatron and the LHC and, on the other hand, by the advancement in perturbative calculations of QCD and electroweak (EW) higher-order corrections. Parton distributions are now determined with unprecedented precision, in many cases at the few-percent level. A paradigmatic illustration of this progress is provided by both the unpolarized and polarized gluon PDFs, which were affected by rather large uncertainties until recently, due to the limited experimental information available. In the unpolarized case, the gluon PDF is now constrained quite accurately from small to large x thanks to the inclusion of processes such a...

A proposal by Lüscher enables one to compute the scattering phases of elastic two-body systems from the energy levels of the lattice Hamiltonian in a finite volume. In this work we generalize the formalism to S-, P -and D-wave meson and baryon resonances, and general total momenta.Employing nonvanishing momenta has several advantages, among them making a wider range of energy levels accessible on a single lattice volume and shifting the level crossing to smaller values of m π L.

We extend a previous improved action study of the Landau gauge gluon propagator, by using a variety of lattices with spacings from a = 0.17 to 0.41 fm, to more fully explore finite volume and discretization effects. We also extend a previously used technique for minimizing lattice artifacts, the appropriate choice of momentum variable or "kinematic correction", by considering it more generally as a "tree-level correction". We demonstrate that by using tree-level correction, determined by the tree-level behavior of the action being considered, it is possible to obtain scaling behavior over a very wide range of momenta and lattice spacings. This makes it possible to explore the infinite volume and continuum limits of the Landau-gauge gluon propagator.