2+1 flavor simulations of QCD with improved staggered quarks

The MILC collaboration has been performing realistic simulations of full QCD with 2+1 flavors of improved staggered quarks. Our simulations allow for controlled continuum and chiral extrapolations. I present results for the light pseudoscalar sector: masses and decay constants, quark masses and Gasser-Leutwyler low-energy constants. In addition I will present some results for heavy-light mesons, decay constants and semileptonic form factors, obtained in collaboration with the HPQCD and Fermilab lattice collaborations. Such calculations will help in the extraction of CKM matrix elements from experimental measurements.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of QNP06, IVth International Conference on Quarks and Nuclear Physics, Madrid, June 200

Hadronic matrix elements for B-mixing in the Standard Model and beyond

We use lattice QCD to calculate the B-mixing hadronic matrix elements for a basis of effective four-quark operators that spans the space of all possible contributions in, and beyond, the Standard Model. We present results for the SU(3)-breaking ratio and discuss our ongoing calculation of the mixing matrix elements, including the first calculation of the beyond the Standard Model matrix elements from unquenched lattice QCD.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure. Proceedings for CIPANP 2012 - Eleventh Conference on the Intersections of Particle and Nuclear Physics, St. Petersburg FL, May 29 - June 3 201

FLIC-Overlap Fermions and Topology

APE smearing the links in the irrelevant operators of clover fermions (Fat-Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) fermions) provides significant improvement in the condition number of the Hermitian-Dirac operator and gives rise to a factor of two savings in computing the overlap operator. This report investigates the effects of using a highly-improved definition of the lattice field-strength tensor F_mu_nu in the fermion action, made possible through the use of APE-smeared fat links in the construction of the irrelevant operators. Spurious double-zero crossings in the spectral flow of the Hermitian-Wilson Dirac operator associated with lattice artifacts at the scale of the lattice spacing are removed with FLIC fermions composed with an O(a^4)-improved lattice field strength tensor. Hence, FLIC-Overlap fermions provide an additional benefit to the overlap formalism: a correct realization of topology in the fermion sector on the lattice.Comment: Lattice2002(chiral

Measurement of B(D+ -> mu+ nu) and the pseudoscalar decay constant f_D at CLEO

The analysis of 60 1/pb data collected on the psi(3770) resonance with the CLEO-c detector has produced the first statistically significant signal for D+ -> mu+ nu decay and led to the measurement of the decay branching fraction B(D+ -> mu+ nu) = (3.5 +- 1.4 +- 0.6) x 10-4 and the pseudoscalar decay constant f_D = (202 +- 41 +- 17) MeV.Comment: Talk presented at the 1st Meeting of the APS Topical Group on Hadronic Physics (Fermilab, Oct. 24-26, 2004). LaTeX 4 pages, 2 figure

Mass of the B_c Meson in Three-Flavor Lattice QCD

We use lattice QCD to predict the mass of the $B_c$ meson. We use the MILC Collaboration's ensembles of lattice gauge fields, which have a quark sea with two flavors much lighter than a third. Our final result is $m_{B_c}=6304\pm12^{+18}_{- 0} MeV$. The first error bar is a sum in quadrature of statistical and systematic uncertainties, and the second is an estimate of heavy-quark discretization effects.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; shorten to fit in PRL; published versio

Dynamical fat link fermions

The use of APE smearing or other blocking techniques in fermion actions can provide many advantages. There are many variants of these fat link actions in lattice QCD currently, such as FLIC fermions. Frequently, fat link actions make use of the APE blocking technique in combination with a projection of the blocked links back into the special unitary group. This reunitarisation is often performed using an iterative maximisation of a gauge invariant measure. This technique is not differentiable with respect to the gauge field and thus prevents the use of standard Hybrid Monte Carlo simulation algorithms. The use of an alternative projection technique circumvents this difficulty and allows the simulation of dynamical fat link fermions with standard HMC and its variants.Comment: LHP '03 (Cairns) Proceeding

B Mixing in the Standard Model and Beyond: Lattice QCD

We give a brief overview and progress report on our lattice QCD calculation of neutral B mixing hadronic matrix elements needed for Standard Model and Beyond the Standard Model physics. Reference [1] contains more details and results.Comment: 3 pages, 0 figures, Proceedings of the 19th Particles and Nuclei International Conference (PANIC11), Cambridge, MA, U.S.A., July 201

Quantum chromodynamics with advanced computing

We survey results in lattice quantum chromodynamics from groups in the USQCD Collaboration. The main focus is on physics, but many aspects of the discussion are aimed at an audience of computational physicists.Comment: 17 pp. Featured presentation at Scientific Discovery with Advanced Computing, July 13-17, Seattl

Generalised Spin Projection for Fermion Actions

The majority of compute time doing lattice QCD is spent inverting the fermion matrix. The time that this takes increases with the condition number of the matrix. The FLIC(Fat Link Irrelevant Clover) action displays, among other properties, an improved condition number compared to standard actions and hence is of interest due to potential compute time savings. However, due to its two different link sets there is a factor of two cost in floating point multiplications compared to the Wilson action. An additional factor of two has been attributed due to the loss of the so-called spin projection trick. We show that any split-link action may be written in terms of spin projectors, reducing the additional cost to at most a factor of two. Also, we review an efficient means of evaluating the clover term, which is additional expense not present in the Wilson action.Comment: 4 page