# HLRZ1998-55WUP-TH 98-30 An Estimate of 𝛼_𝑆 from Bottomonium in Unquenched QCD

## 1 Introduction

In recent years lattice calculations of the strong coupling constant have achieved a remarkable precision. This is mainly due to the availability of gauge configurations that partially include the effects of vacuum polarisation. A promising approach has been pioneered by the NRQCD Collaboration . They examine expectation values of small Wilson loops that are very easily and accurately computed on the lattice and for which perturbative expansions are known to $`O(\alpha _S^2)`$. The preferred choice to fix the lattice scale, $`a^1`$ in this context are the lowest radial and orbital splittings in the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ system since they do not require a precise tuning of the b-quark mass, $`m_b`$ and are expected to exhibit little dependence on the light quark masses. In this short note we present a determination of $`\alpha _S`$ along the lines of Ref. that is able to clarify two important issues: first, we use dynamical Wilson quarks instead of the staggered formulation, so that one may estimate the impact of different discretisation schemes. Second, we calculate the dependence of $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ levels on the dynamical quark mass, $`m_q`$ and thus reduce the systematic error from simulating overly heavy sea-quarks.

## 2 Simulation

We employ NRQCD at next-to-leading order, i.e. spin-independent operators of $`O(m_bv^2)`$, $`O(m_bv^4)`$ and spin-dependent terms of $`O(m_bv^4)`$ and $`O(m_bv^6)`$ have been included into the action. We rely on the recipe of tadpole improvement using $`u_0`$ from the mean-link in Landau gauge to account for the bulk of loop contributions and otherwise stick to tree-level couplings. Propagators are evaluated on SESAM’s gauge configurations with two degenerate flavours of Wilson quarks . We exploit each configuration more than once starting at different sources, see Table 1. We did not tune the bare b-quark mass but kept $`am_b=1.7`$ throughout the simulation. This value reproduces the correct $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ mass in the quenched approximation and it turns out to be adequate in the full theory, too, leading to kinetic masses $`m_{\mathrm{kin}}(\mathrm{{\rm Y}})=9.97(28),9.63(24),9.68(27)\mathrm{GeV}`$ for $`\kappa =0.1560,0.1570,0.1575`$, respectively. Compared to the results presented in , we have significantly increased our statistics except for the heaviest sea-quark mass.

## 3 Bottomonium Spectroscopy

The results quoted here are taken from simultaneous multi-exponential fits to correlators with a local sink and a source that is smeared with a carefully chosen potential model wave function. These correlators have the cleanest signals and lead to very stable fits. Following  we extrapolate the energy splittings linearly in the sea-quark mass,

$$a\mathrm{\Delta }E=a\mathrm{\Delta }E_0+cam_q$$
(1)   
to $`am_{\mathrm{eff}}am_s/30.0159`$ which is somewhat below our lightest quark mass. Fit parameters are listed in Table 2 together with the energy splittings at $`m_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. We find the dependence on the dynamical quark mass to be much smaller than in the light hadron sector.

Results for lattice spacings are summarised in Table 3. We use the average spacing from $`2^3S_11^3S_1`$ and $`1^3\overline{P}1^3S_1`$ (at $`m_q=m_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ in the unquenched case) to convert our results to physical units. Note that the average $`a^1`$ for $`\beta =5.6`$, $`n_f=2`$ at $`am_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ agrees well with the quenched one at $`\beta =6.0`$, so that we can directly compare both theories. Figure 1 collects our spectrum results for two and zero flavours. It is obvious that the gross level structure computed on quenched configurations disagrees with experiment whereas the $`n_f=2`$ results are in much closer agreement. This is also evident from Table 3 which shows that the lattice spacings from the 2S-1S and the 1P-1S splittings do not agree in the quenched theory whereas they coincide when two dynamical quarks are switched on.

## 4 Plaquette Coupling

We adopt the definition of the plaquette coupling given in ,

$`\mathrm{ln}W_{11}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{}\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{}=`$ (2)   
$`{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi }{3}}\alpha _P\left({\displaystyle \frac{3.41}{a}}\right)\left[1\left(1.1855+0.0249n_f\right)\alpha _P\right]`$   
which equals the expansion in $`\alpha _V`$ but shifts truncation errors to the conversion into standard couplings later on. In Table 4 we summarise the couplings $`\alpha _P`$ obtained from Eq.(2) as well as the scales determined from the 1P-1S ($`\overline{\chi }S`$) and 2S-1S ($`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}^{}\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$) splittings. In the unquenched case we quote values for both $`am_q=am_s/3`$ and the chiral limit to estimate the systematic error connected to the finite sea-quark mass. Subsequently these couplings are evolved to a common scale using the universal two-loop $`\beta `$ function. The plaquette couplings in the quenched and unquenched theory can now be extrapolated to the active number of light quark flavours which is expected to be $`n_f=3`$ in the case of the low-lying $`b\overline{b}`$ bound states. Guided by the perturbative evolution, we extrapolate $`\alpha _P^1`$ linearly in $`n_f`$, Figure 2. Obviously the mismatch between $`\alpha _P`$-values obtained from different splittings in the quenched approximation disappears, once the dynamical quarks are switched on.

## 5 Discussion

To make the connection with the $`\overline{MS}`$-scheme one invokes

$`\alpha _{\overline{MS}}^{(n_f)}\left(Q\right)=`$   
$`\alpha _P^{(n_f)}\left(\mathrm{e}^{5/6}Q\right)\left[1+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}\alpha _P^{(n_f)}+C_2(n_f)\alpha _P^2+\mathrm{}\right],`$   
where $`C_2=0.96`$ for $`n_f=0`$. Following Ref. , we use this value also for $`n_f=2`$ and take the whole size of the quenched two-loop contribution as an error estimate for the conversion.

The couplings are evolved to the Z mass applying third-order perturbative evolution. We perform the matching at the heavy-quark thresholds $`m_c=1.3`$ GeV and $`m_b=4.1`$ GeV. We thus arrive at our final results

$$\alpha _{\overline{MS}}\left(m_Z\right)=\{\begin{array}{ccc}0.1118\hfill & (16)(5)(20)\hfill & \overline{\chi }\mathrm{{\rm Y}}\hfill \\ 0.1124\hfill & (18)(15)(20)\hfill & \mathrm{{\rm Y}}^{}\mathrm{{\rm Y}}\hfill \end{array}$$
(3)   
The first error includes the statistical uncertainty and the systematic errors due to the influence of relativistic corrections and changes in $`u_0`$ on the lattice scale. The second error quantifies the sea-quark mass dependence and the last one the truncation error in the conversion.

We cannot confirm the staggered result  but obtain a value of $`\alpha _{\overline{MS}}(m_Z)`$ which is smaller by two standard deviations. A closer inspection reveals that the effect can be traced back to the difference between staggered and Wilson plaquette values which is larger than anticipated from perturbation theory, while the scales in both simulations are comparable. There is some controversy about the proper way to determine the lattice scale in an unquenched simulation. Whereas SESAM’s strategy is to set $`a^1`$ in the chiral limit, one may also think of separate lattice spacings for each quark mass. A priori it is conceivable that the value of $`\alpha _P`$ would be larger if it were determined on each subensemble and then extrapolated in $`m_q`$. However, we observe a very mild dependence of the $`1P1S`$ splitting on the quark mass, so that different extrapolation methods do not produce a big effect.