# New results from APE with nonperturbatively improved Wilson fermionsTalk given by D. Becirevic at “Lattice98”, Boulder, CO. He acknowledges the partial supports of: IN2P3, CNRS, and the organizers of the conference.

## Abstract

We present the results for hadronic spectrum, decay constants and the light quark masses obtained with non-perturbatively improved Wilson fermions. We also give our preliminary results for the heavy-light decay constants.

The method for systematic improvement of the Wilson action and bilinear quark operators, recently proposed by Alpha–collaboration , provides a full cancellation of the linear discretization errors. In other words, the results of lattice calculations of any $`onshell`$ quantity, do converge to the continuum limit ($`a0`$) much faster , i.e. with the rate $`𝒪(a^2)`$.

To verify and quantify the effect of this improvement (first improved studies of the spectroscopy were done in ), we generated 100 independent gauge field configurations on a $`24^3\times 64`$ lattice, at $`\beta =6.2`$, in the quenched approximation. We used the non-perturbative(NP) value of the coefficient for the improvement of the action, $`c_{_{SW}}`$, which guarantees the full improvement of the hadron mass spectrum. The values of all other counterterms coefficients, as well as of the renormalization constants which we used in this work, are listed in Tab. 1. Note that the NP results for $`Z_S`$, $`Z_P`$ and $`Z_T`$ (given in Tab. 1 at $`\mu a=1`$), are new. We calculated several correlators for mesons made of $`four`$ degenerate quark ‘flavors’. In the analysis of all hadronic quantities (spectrum and decay constants), we used the method of ‘physical lattice planes’, proposed and extensively used in Ref. . Further details on the computation and the analysis can be found in . Here, we will address several issues which are relevant for the improvement, and report our results.

Critical hopping parameter: The first observation that we would like to make, is that the value $`\kappa _{crit}`$ must be reached through a quadratic fit:

$`M_{PS}^2`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha _1(2m_q)+\alpha _2(2m_q)^2`$ (1)   
where $`2m_q=\kappa ^1\kappa _{crit}^1`$, is the quark mass that can be derived from the vector Ward identity (VWI). Namely, in order to be consistent with the $`𝒪(a)`$-improvement, the usual (linear) fit in quark mass should also be modified as $`M_{PS}^2\stackrel{~}{m}_q`$, where $`\stackrel{~}{m}_q=m_q(1+b_mm_q)`$. In perturbation theory, the coefficient $`b_m<0`$. By fitting our data with (1), we unambiguously obtain $`\alpha _2>0`$, which means that the positive curvature, due to the physical $`m_q^2`$ corrections, exceeds the lattice artifacts correction of the same order ($`m_q^2`$). The values of $`\kappa _{crit}`$ obtained from the quadratic and the linear fits differ appreciably ($`\kappa _{crit}^{quad[lin]}=0.13585(2)[0.13576(2)]`$). One more convincing argument in favor of $`\kappa _{crit}^{quad}`$, is provided by the $`𝒪(a)`$ improved axial Ward identity (AWI), by which the quark mass is defined as:

$`\rho _q={\displaystyle \frac{_0A_0(t)𝒪^{}(0)}{2P(t)𝒪^{}(0)}}+𝒪(a^2).`$ (2)   
From the linear fit $`\rho _q(1/\kappa )`$, we get $`lim_{\rho _q0}\kappa =0.13584(5)`$. A quadratic fit $`\rho _q(1/\kappa )`$ gives the same result and we deduce that $`\kappa _{crit}^{quad}`$ is the correct value.

Calibration of $`a^1`$: We adopt the argument (of Ref. ) that, due to the minimal extrapolation required, the most convenient quantity to fix $`a^1`$ is $`m_K^{}`$. We obtain: $`a^1=2.75(17)GeV`$. An encouraging feature of the improvement is that the value of the inverse lattice spacing, as obtained by using various physical quantities (e.g. $`m_\rho `$, $`f_K`$, $`f_\pi `$), remains stable and close to the one obtained from the computation of the string tension (the pure gluonic quantity).

Light quark masses: The quark mass can be extracted in two ways, depending on the definition we chose, VWI or AWI. The two bare quark masses, when appropriately renormalized, should converge to the same physical result. Recently in Ref. , this was proved to be the case when the renormalization constants (RC) are computed non-perturbatively. We have also calculated the RC’s (in the $`RI`$ scheme) by using the method for NP renormalization  (see Tab. 1). Subtleties and computational details on the extraction of bare lattice quark masses can be found in . The $`b`$-coefficients, which are relevant for the improvement out of the chiral limit only, i.e. $`Z_{S,P,A}(m,\mu )(1+b_{S,P,A}ma)Z_{S,P,A}(0,\mu )`$, are taken from the (boosted) perturbation theory. Our final results read:

$`m_{u,d}^{^{(\overline{\mathrm{MS}})}}(2GeV)`$ $`=`$ $`4.5(4)_{_{N^2LO}}[4.9(4)_{_{NLO}}]\mathrm{MeV},`$ (3)   
$`m_s^{^{(\overline{\mathrm{MS}})}}(2GeV)`$ $`=`$ $`111(12)_{_{N^2LO}}[121(13)_{_{NLO}}]\mathrm{MeV}.`$   
Note that the matching between the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ and $`RI`$ schemes was also performed at NNLO accuracy , which is the new result. To the same accuracy, the renorm. group invariant quark masses are:   
$`\widehat{m}_{u,d}=7.2(6)\mathrm{MeV},\widehat{m}_s=177(19)\mathrm{MeV}`$.   

Light meson decay constants: For the full $`𝒪(a)`$ improvement of the quark bilinear operators, the coefficients $`c_J`$, of the appropriate counterterms, are tuned to their non-perturbative values. Only $`c_T`$ is to be taken from the boosted perturbation theory. By using the improved currents matrix elements, we define decay constants in the following way:

$`0|A_0|𝒫`$ $`=`$ $`iM_𝒫\left[F_𝒫^{(0)}+c_AaF_𝒫^{(1)}\right],`$ (4)   
$`0|V_i|𝒱^{(\lambda )}`$ $`=`$ $`ie_i^{(\lambda )}M_𝒱\left[F_𝒱^{(0)}+c_VaF_𝒱^{(1)}\right],`$ (5)   
$`0|T_{i0}|𝒱^{(\lambda )}`$ $`=`$ $`ie_i^{(\lambda )}M_𝒱\left[F_𝒱^{T(0)}+c_VaF_𝒱^{T(1)}\right]`$ (6)   
where $`𝒫`$, $`𝒱`$ denote the pseudoscalar and vector mesons at rest. The corrections $`aF_𝒥^{(1)}`$, correspond to the matrix element of: the gradient of the pseudoscalar density, the divergence of tensor current, and to the curl of the vector current, respectively. Empirically, $`aF_𝒫^{(1)}`$ is large, whereas $`aF_𝒱^{(1)}`$ and $`aF_𝒱^{T(1)}`$ are small. However, when multiplied by corresponding $`c_J`$, their respective contributions never exceed $`5\%`$, relative to the leading term ($`F_𝒥^{(0)}`$).

All the bare lattice local currents in (6), should be multiplied by appropriate renormalization constants. In the chiral limit, they are all computed nonperturbatively (see Tab. 1). This is not the case for $`b_J`$’s, which are all (except for $`b_V`$) taken from 1-$`loop`$ boosted perturbation theory. With all these ingredients, we calculated the pseudoscalar and vector decay constants. The results, obtained using $`a^1(m_K^{})`$, are listed in Tab. 2.

It is well known that the ratio $`f_K/f_\pi 1`$ (which is the ‘measure’ of the SU(3) flavor breaking), as extracted from the lattice calculation, is always smaller than the experimental value ($`0.22`$). After a careful analysis of all the data (unimproved and improved), the lesson we draw is: $`(f_Kf_\pi )/f_\pi `$ from the lattice quenched studies is insensitive to the improvement and remains more than $`30\%`$ lower than its experimental value.   
On the other hand, when compared to the unimproved results, the values for the vector decay constants are in substantially better agreement with the experimental ones. For comparison with the unimproved results, we show the directly extracted data (with no extrapolations), as obtained from simulations with unimproved, tree-level improved and NP improved Wilson fermions.

The other source of vector mesons is provided by the tensor current. The masses extracted from vector and tensor correlation functions are (of course) the same, while the couplings are different. In Tab. 2, we give the first lattice predictions for $`f_{\rho ,K^{},\varphi }^T(2\mathrm{GeV})`$.

Heavy-light meson decay constant (preliminary results): In the simulations, we included four heavy quarks which we combined with the four light ones. After a quadratic extrapolation/interpolation in light quark masses, we interpolate in the charm region to estimate $`f_D`$ and $`f_{D_s}`$. This results in:

$`f_D`$ $`=`$ $`202\pm 14{}_{12}{}^{+0}\mathrm{MeV},`$   
$`f_{D_s}`$ $`=`$ $`231\pm 11{}_{0}{}^{+7}\mathrm{MeV},`$   
$`f_{D_s}/f_D`$ $`=`$ $`1.11\pm 0.03.`$ (7)   
The stability of this result (see ), does not hold for $`B`$ mesons. As usual, we have to extrapolate our results by using the heavy quark scaling law:

$`f_{Qq}={\displaystyle \frac{𝔞_0}{\sqrt{m_{Qq}}}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{𝔞_1}{m_{Qq}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{𝔞_2}{m_{Qq}^2}}\right).`$ (8)   
It turns out that $`f_{B,B_s}`$ are sensitive to whether we include the $`1/m_{Qq}^2`$ term in the fit or not. This is illustrated in Fig. 2, and its effects, along with the scale fixing dependence, are included in the systematic error. Our results are:

$`f_B`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}177}\pm 19{}_{10}{}^{+29}\mathrm{MeV},`$   
$`f_{B_s}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}206}\pm 16{}_{0}{}^{+32}\mathrm{MeV},`$   
$`f_{B_s}/f_B`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1.16}\pm 0.04.`$ (9)