arXiv subjects

Francesco Sanfilippo

Publications and source records attributed to Francesco Sanfilippo.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Recent progress on QCD inputs for axion phenomenology

The properties of the QCD axion are strictly related to the dependence of strong interactions on the topological parameter theta. We present a determination of the topological properties of QCD for temperatures up to around 600 MeV, obtained by lattice QCD simulations with 2+1 flavors and physical quark masses. Numerical results for the topological susceptibility, when compared to instanton gas computations, differ both in size and in the temperature dependence. We discuss the implications of such findings for axion phenomenology, also in comparison to similar studies in the literature, and the prospects for future investigations.

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arXiv2016

Pion structure from twisted mass lattice QCD down to the physical pion mass

We present an investigation of pion structure based on ETMC $N_f=2$ and $N_f=2+1+1$ twisted mass configurations at maximal twist. We compute the first moment of the quark momentum fraction of the pion, $\langle x \rangle$ and the electromagnetic form factor, $F_π(Q^2)$. For the latter, momentum is injected using twisted boundary conditions and the calculation is carried out directly at the physical pion mass. We find that our data are consistent with vector meson dominance and experimental data in the region of small momentum transfer. For $\langle x \rangle$, we find that our chirally and continuum extrapolated result is compatible with its phenomenological value.

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arXiv2016

Charm Physics with Domain Wall Fermions and Physical Pion Masses

We present RBC/UKQCD's charm project using $N_f=2+1$ flavour ensembles with inverse lattice spacings in the range $1.73-2.77\,\mathrm{GeV}$ and two physical pion mass ensembles. Domain wall fermions are used for the light as well as the charm quarks. We discuss our strategy for the extraction of the decay constants $f_D$ and $f_{D_s}$ and their extrapolation to the continuum limit, physical pion masses and the physical heavy quark mass. Our preliminary results are $f_D=208.7(2.8)\,\mathrm{MeV}$ and $f_{D_s}=246.4(1.9)\,\mathrm{MeV}$ where the quoted error is statistical only. We outline our current approach to extend the reach in the heavy quark mass and present preliminary results.

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arXiv2016

Across the deconfinement

The deconfinement transition at vanishing chemical potential can be reliably studied by lattice simulations and its general features are by now well known. On the contrary, what happens at finite density is still largely unknown and we will review the results obtained in the last year regarding the dependence, for small density, of the (pseudo)critical temperature on the baryonic chemical potential.

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arXiv2016

Metadynamics Surfing on Topology Barriers: the $CP^{N-1}$ Case

As one approaches the continuum limit, $QCD$ systems, investigated via numerical simulations, remain trapped in sectors of field space with fixed topological charge. As a consequence the numerical studies of physical quantities may give biased results. The same is true in the case of two dimensional $CP^{N-1}$ models. In this paper we show that metadynamics, when used to simulate $CP^{N-1}$, allows to address efficiently this problem. By studying $CP^{20}$ we show that we are able to reconstruct the free energy of the topological charge $F(Q)$ and compute the topological susceptibility as a function of the coupling and of the volume. This is a very important physical quantity in studies of the dynamics of the $θ$ vacuum and of the axion. This method can in principle be extended to $QCD$ applications.

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arXiv2016

Magnetic field effects on the static quark potential at zero and finite temperature

We investigate the static $Q\bar{Q}$ potential at zero and finite temperature in the presence of a constant and uniform external magnetic field $\vec{B}$, for several values of the lattice spacing and for different orientations with respect to $\vec{B}$. As a byproduct, we provide continuum limit extrapolated results for the string tension, the Coulomb coupling and the Sommer parameter at $T = 0$ and $B = 0$. We confirm the presence in the continuum of a $B$-induced anisotropy, regarding essentially the string tension, for which it is of the order of 15\% at $|e| B \sim 1~{\rm GeV}^2$ and would suggest, if extrapolated to larger fields, a vanishing string tension along the magnetic field for $|e| B \gtrsim 4$ GeV$^2$. The angular dependence for $|e| B \lesssim 1$ GeV$^2$ can be nicely parametrized by the first allowed term in an angular Fourier expansion, corresponding to a quadrupole deformation. Finally, for $T \neq 0$, the main effect of the magnetic field is a general suppression of the string tension, leading to a precocious loss of the confining properties: this happens even before the appearance of inverse magnetic catalysis in the chiral condensate, supporting the idea that the influence of the magnetic field on the confining properties is the leading effect originating the decrease of $T_c$ as a function of $B$.

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arXiv2016

Axion phenomenology and $θ$-dependence from $N_f = 2+1$ lattice QCD

We investigate the topological properties of $N_f = 2+1$ QCD with physical quark masses, both at zero and finite temperature. We adopt stout improved staggered fermions and explore a range of lattice spacings $a \sim 0.05 - 0.12$ fm. At zero temperature we estimate both finite size and finite cut-off effects, comparing our continuum extrapolated results for the topological susceptibility $χ$ with predictions from chiral perturbation theory. At finite temperature, we explore a region going from $T_c$ up to around $4\, T_c$, where we provide continuum extrapolated results for the topological susceptibility and for the fourth moment of the topological charge distribution. While the latter converges to the dilute instanton gas prediction the former differs strongly both in the size and in the temperature dependence. This results in a shift of the axion dark matter window of almost one order of magnitude with respect to the instanton computation.

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arXiv2016

Roberge-Weiss endpoint at the physical point of $N_f = 2+1$ QCD

We study the phase diagram of $N_f = 2+1$ QCD in the $T - μ_B$ plane and investigate the critical point corresponding to the onset of the Roberge-Weiss transition, which is found for imaginary values of $μ_B$. We make use of stout improved staggered fermions and of the tree level Symanzik gauge action, and explore four different sets of lattice spacings, corresponding to $N_t = 4,6,8,10$, and different spatial sizes, in order to assess the universality class of the critical point. The continuum extrapolated value of the endpoint temperature is found to be $T_{\rm RW} = 208(5)$ MeV, i.e. $T_{\rm RW}/T_c \sim 1.34(7)$, where $T_c$ is the chiral pseudocritical temperature at zero chemical potential, while our finite size scaling analysis, performed on $N_t = 4$ and $N_t = 6$ lattices, provides evidence for a critical point in the $3d$ Ising universality class.

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arXiv2016

An exploratory study of heavy domain wall fermions on the lattice

We report on an exploratory study of domain wall fermions (DWF) as a lattice regularisation for heavy quarks. Within the framework of quenched QCD with the tree-level improved Symanzik gauge action we identify the DWF parameters which minimise discretisation effects. We find the corresponding effective 4$d$ overlap operator to be exponentially local, independent of the quark mass. We determine a maximum bare heavy quark mass of $am_h\approx 0.4$, below which the approximate chiral symmetry and O(a)-improvement of DWF are sustained. This threshold appears to be largely independent of the lattice spacing. Based on these findings, we carried out a detailed scaling study for the heavy-strange meson dispersion relation and decay constant on four ensembles with lattice spacings in the range $2.0-5.7\,\mathrm{GeV}$. We observe very mild $a^2$ scaling towards the continuum limit. Our findings establish a sound basis for heavy DWF in dynamical simulations of lattice QCD with relevance to Standard Model phenomenology.

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arXiv2015

Domain Wall Charm Physics with Physical Pion Masses: Decay constants, bag and $ξ$ parameters

We provide an overview of RBC/UKQCD's charm project on 2+1 flavour physical pion mass ensembles using Möbius Domain Wall Fermions for the light as well as for the charm quark. We discuss the analysis strategy in detail and present results at the different stages of the analysis for $D$ and $D_s$ decay constants as well as the bag and $ξ$ parameters. We also discuss future approaches to extend the reach in the heavy quark mass.

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arXiv2015

Curvature of the chiral pseudo-critical line in QCD: continuum extrapolated results

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arXiv2015

Quark Masses from Lattice QCD

In this talk I review several topics concerning the determination of quark masses by means of lattice QCD simulations, with particular focus on recently introduced techniques of non-perturbative renormalisation, the determination of heavy quark masses, and the proper quantification of the source of isospin breaking effects in the light quark sector.

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arXiv2015

Precision study of critical slowing down in lattice simulations of the CP^{N-1} model

With the aim of studying the relevance and properties of critical slowing down in Monte Carlo simulations of lattice quantum field theories we carried out a high precision numerical study of the discretised two-dimensional CP^{N-1} model at N=10 using an over-heat bath algorithm. We identify critical slowing down in terms of slowly-evolving topological modes and present evidence that other observables couple to these slow modes. This coupling is found to reduce however as we increase the physical volume in which we simulate.

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arXiv2015

The kaon semileptonic form factor in Nf=2+1 domain wall lattice QCD with physical light quark masses

We present the first calculation of the kaon semileptonic form factor with sea and valence quark masses tuned to their physical values in the continuum limit of 2+1 flavour domain wall lattice QCD. We analyse a comprehensive set of simulations at the phenomenologically convenient point of zero momentum transfer in large physical volumes and for two different values of the lattice spacing. Our prediction for the form factor is f+(0)=0.9685(34)(14) where the first error is statistical and the second error systematic. This result can be combined with experimental measurements of K->pi decays for a determination of the CKM-matrix element for which we predict |Vus|=0.2233(5)(9) where the first error is from experiment and the second error from the lattice computation.

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arXiv2015

Curvature of the chiral pseudo-critical line in QCD

We determine the curvature of the pseudo-critical line of strong interactions by means of numerical simulations at imaginary chemical potentials. We consider $N_f=2+1$ stout improved staggered fermions with physical quark masses and the tree level Symanzik gauge action, and explore two different sets of lattice spacings, corresponding to temporal extensions $N_t = 6$ and $N_t = 8$. Both the renormalized chiral condensate and the renormalized chiral susceptibility are used to locate the transition. The determinations obtained from the two quantities are in good agreement, a preliminary continuum extrapolation yields $κ= 0.013(2)(1)$. We also investigate the impact of a non-zero strange quark chemical potential and compare our results to previous determinations in the literature, discussing the possible sources of systematic errors affecting the various procedures.

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arXiv2015

Charm physics with physical light and strange quarks using domain wall fermions

We present a study of charm physics using RBC/UKQCD 2+1 flavour physical point domain wall fermion ensembles for the light quarks as well as for the valence charm quark. After a brief motivation of domain wall fermions as a suitable heavy quark discretisation we will show first results for masses and matrix elements.

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arXiv2015

Charm physics with Moebius Domain Wall Fermions

We present results showing that Domain Wall fermions are a suitable discretisation for the simulation of heavy quarks. This is done by a continuum scaling study of charm quarks in a Möbius Domain Wall formalism using a quenched set-up. We find that discretisation effects remain well controlled by the choice of Domain Wall parameters preparing the ground work for the ongoing dynamical $2+1f$ charm program of RBC/UKQCD.

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arXiv2014

Lattice QCD estimate of the $η_{c}(2S)\to J/ψγ$ decay rate

We compute the hadronic matrix element relevant to the physical radiative decay $η_{c}(2S)\to J/ψγ$ by means of lattice QCD. We use the (maximally) twisted mass QCD action with Nf=2 light dynamical quarks and from the computations made at four lattice spacings we were able to take the continuum limit. The value of the mass ratio $m_{η_c(2S)}/m_{η_c(1S)}$ we obtain is consistent with the experimental value, and our prediction for the form factor is $V^{η_{c}(2S)\to J/ψγ}(0)\equiv V_{12}(0)=0.32(6)(2)$, leading to $Γ(η_c (2S) \to J/ψγ) = (15.7\pm 5.7)$ keV, which is much larger than $Γ(ψ(2S) \to η_cγ)$ and within reach of modern experiments.

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