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C. Davies

Publications and source records attributed to C. Davies.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

Newborn Be star systems observed shortly after mass transfer

Many classical Be stars acquire their very rapid rotation by mass and angular-momentum transfer in massive binaries. Short-lived intermediate-phase objects have only been discovered recently. Data archives and the literature have been searched for additional candidates exhibiting this patterns. Thirteen candidates were identified at various confidence levels. Adding to the two known systems identified as classical Be star+pre-subdwarf binaries (LB-1 and HR6819), two more (V742Cas, HD44637) could be confirmed with interferometry, with V742Cas setting a new record for the smallest visually observed angular semi-major axis, at a=0.663mas. Two further ones (V447Sct, V1362Cyg) are not resolved interferometrically, but other evidence puts them at the same confidence level as LB-1. V2174Cyg is a candidate with very high confidence, but was not observed interferometrically. The remaining ones are either candidates with varying levels of confidence. Of a mostly magnitude complete sample of 328 Be stars, 0.5-1% are found to have recently completed the mass overflow that led to their formation. Another 5% are systems with compact subdwarf companions, i.e., further evolved after a previous overflow, and possibly two more percent harbor white dwarfs. All these systems are of early B-subtypes, however, and if the original sample is restricted to early subtypes (136 objects), these percentages increase by a factor of about 2.5, while dropping to zero for the mid and late subtypes (together 204 objects). This strongly suggests that early- vs. mid- and late-type Be stars have differently weighted channels to acquire their rapid rotation, namely binary interaction vs. evolutionary spin-up.

astro-ph.SR

Determination of c and b quark masses

The determination of quark masses has been transformed in the past few years by accurate results from realistic lattice QCD. This has meant a range of new methods for both b and c quarks which I will describe along with results from continuum techniques. The recent improvement in Lattice QCD actions along with the generation of gluon configurations including sea quarks on fine lattices has given us viable methods for handling heavy quarks with relativistic actions. This has allowed us for the first time to connect the heavy and light sectors through accurate determination of ratios of quark masses, such as m_c/m_s. Such ratios enable us to leverage the accuracy of c and b mass determinations into accurate s and light quark masses. The comparison of quark masses from different methods and formalisms provides a strong test of QCD and the masses themselves are needed in calculations for the cross-sections of various processes at LHC, for example H to bb.

hep-lat

Methods and Models for Hadron Physics

A round table held during the Hadron07 Conference focusing on experimental observations of new hadronic states, on theoretical perspectives for their description, and on the role of hadronic spectroscopy in furthering our knowledge of the fundamental theory of strong interactions.

hep-ph

Baryon masses with improved staggered quarks

The MILC collaboration's simulations with improved staggered quarks are being extended with runs at a lattice spacing of 0.06 fm with quark masses down to one tenth the strange quark mass. We give a brief introduction to these new simulations and the determination of the lattice spacing. Then we combine these new runs with older results to study the masses of the nucleon and the Omega minus in the continuum and chiral limits.

hep-lat

Highly Improved Staggered Quarks on the Lattice, with Applications to Charm Physics

We use perturbative Symanzik improvement to create a new staggered-quark action (HISQ) that has greatly reduced one-loop taste-exchange errors, no tree-level order a^2 errors, and no tree-level order (am)^4 errors to leading order in the quark's velocity v/c. We demonstrate with simulations that the resulting action has taste-exchange interactions that are at least 3--4 times smaller than the widely used ASQTAD action. We show how to estimate errors due to taste exchange by comparing ASQTAD and HISQ simulations, and demonstrate with simulations that such errors are no more than 1% when HISQ is used for light quarks at lattice spacings of 1/10 fm or less. The suppression of (am)^4 errors also makes HISQ the most accurate discretization currently available for simulating c quarks. We demonstrate this in a new analysis of the psi-eta_c mass splitting using the HISQ action on lattices where a m_c=0.43 and 0.66, with full-QCD gluon configurations (from MILC). We obtain a result of~111(5) MeV which compares well with experiment. We discuss applications of this formalism to D physics and present our first high-precision results for D_s mesons.

hep-lat

Heavy Quarkonium Physics

This report is the result of the collaboration and research effort of the Quarkonium Working Group over the last three years. It provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in heavy-quarkonium theory and experiment, covering quarkonium spectroscopy, decay, and production, the determination of QCD parameters from quarkonium observables, quarkonia in media, and the effects on quarkonia of physics beyond the Standard Model. An introduction to common theoretical and experimental tools is included. Future opportunities for research in quarkonium physics are also discussed.

hep-ph

First determination of the strange and light quark masses from full lattice QCD

We compute the strange quark mass $m_s$ and the average of the $u$ and $d$ quark masses $\hat m$ using full lattice QCD with three dynamical quarks combined with experimental values for the pion and kaon masses. The simulations have degenerate $u$ and $d$ quarks with masses $m_u=m_d\equiv \hat m$ as low as $m_s/8$, and two different values of the lattice spacing. The bare lattice quark masses obtained are converted to the $\msbar$ scheme using perturbation theory at $O(alpha_s)$. Our results are: $m_s^\msbar$(2 GeV) = 76(0)(3)(7)(0) MeV, $\hat m^\msbar$(2 GeV) = 2.8(0)(1)(3)(0) MeV and $m_s/\hat m$ = 27.4(1)(4)(0)(1), where the errors are from statistics, simulation, perturbation theory, and electromagnetic effects, respectively.

hep-lat

B Leptonic Decays and B- bar B Mixing with 2+1 Flavors of Dynamical Quarks

Calculations of B leptonic decays and B- bar B mixing using NRQCD heavy and Asqtad light valence quarks on the MILC dynamical configurations are described. Smearing has been implemented to substantially reduce the statistical errors of the matrix elements needed for the determination of f_B. The four-fermion matrix elements needed for the determination of f_{B_s}^2B_{B_s} have been calculated and a preliminary result is given.

hep-lat

Improvement and Taste Symmetry Breaking for Staggered Quarks

We compare several improved actions for staggered quarks. We study the effect of improvement on the taste changing interactions by calculating the splitting in the pion spectrum. We investigate the effect of the improvement on some topological properties.

hep-lat

The determination of alpha_s from lattice QCD with 2+1 flavors of dynamical quarks

We describe the first lattice determination of the strong coupling constant with 3 flavors of dynamical quarks. The method follows previous analyses in using a perturbative expansion for the plaquette and Upsilon spectroscopy to set the scale. Using dynamical configurations from the MILC collaboration with 2+1 flavors of dynamical quarks we are able to avoid previous problems of having to extrapolate to 3 light flavors from 0 and 2. Our results agree with our previous work: alpha_s_MSbar(M_Z) = 0.121(3).

hep-lat

The Upsilon Spectrum from Lattice QCD with 2+1 Flavors of Dynamical Quarks

We describe the bottomonium spectrum obtained on the MILC configurations which incorporate 2+1 flavors of dynamical quarks. We compare to quenched and 2 flavor results also on MILC configurations. We show that the lattice spacing determination using different quantities shows clear signs of convergence with 2+1 flavors and give results for the leptonic width and hyperfine splitting, in the form of the ratio of the 1st excited state of the Upsilon to that of the ground state.

hep-lat

Towards the application of the Maximum Entropy Method to finite temperature Upsilon Spectroscopy

According to the Narnhofer Thirring Theorem interacting systems at finite temperature cannot be described by particles with a sharp dispersion law. It is therefore mandatory to develop new methods to extract particle masses at finite temperature. The Maximum Entropy method offers a path to obtain the spectral function of a particle correlation function directly. We have implemented the method and tested it with zero temperature Upsilon correlation functions obtained from an NRQCD simulation. Results for different smearing functions are discussed.

hep-lat

Spectroscopy of Hadrons with b Quarks from Lattice NRQCD

Preliminary results from an extensive lattice calculation of the B, B_c, and Υspectrum at quenched β= 6.0 are presented. The study includes radially and orbitally excited mesons, and baryons containing b quarks. The b quarks are formulated using NRQCD; for light and c quarks, a tadpole-improved clover action is used.

hep-lat

Current Renormalisation in NRQCD for Semi-leptonic $B\to D$ Decays

We present a calculation of the renormalisation constants for the temporal vector current, $Z_{V_0}$ and spatial axial current, $Z_{A_k}$, to $O(α_s/M)$ for $B\to D$ transitions using the $O(1/M)$ NRQCD action for both $b$ and $c$ quarks evaluated for a large range of mass parameters. Considerations for the renormalisation of the spatial vector current and the temporal axial current are discussed and initial results for a mixed lattice current are presented for the spatial vector current.

hep-lat

$B$ Spectroscopy from NRQCD with Dynamical Fermions

We present a lattice investigation, partially including the effects of dynamical quarks, of the heavy-light mesons using NRQCD for the heavy quark and the Wilson action for the light quark. We performed an extensive calculation of the spectrum employing a multi-state, multi-exponential fitting analysis which enabled us to extract the $2S{-}1S$ splitting as well as the $^1P_1{-}\bar{S}$ and hyperfine splittings. The Wilson action introduces a large systematic error into the calculation, and within this uncertainty we obtain agreement with experiment. We performed a comprehensive calculation of the heavy-light meson mass, investigating three methods and their range of validity. The agreement found between these methods confirms that Lorentz invariance can be restored at this order in NRQCD by a constant shift to all masses. We calculated spectroscopic quantities over a wide range in heavy quark mass and were able to perform a detailed investigation of heavy quark symmetry around the $b$ quark mass. In particular, we extracted the nonperturbative coefficients of terms in the heavy quark expansion of the meson binding energy. We demonstrate the importance of using tadpole-improved operators in such a calculation.

hep-lat

Heavy-light meson decay constants from NRQCD: an analysis of the 1/M corrections

We present {\it preliminary} results for the decay constants of heavy-light mesons using NRQCD heavy and tadpole improved Clover light quarks. A comparison is made with data obtained using Wilson light quarks. We present an analysis of the 1/M corrections to the decay constants in the static limit and compare with the predictions of HQET.

hep-lat

B Physics with NRQCD: A Quenched Study

We present results on the spectrum of B mesons and heavy baryons, using a non-relativistic formulation for the heavy and a clover action for the light quark. We also discuss B meson decay constants and their dependency upon the heavy meson mass.

hep-lat