Equation of state for nucleonic matter and its quark mass dependence from the nuclear force in lattice QCD

Two-baryon systems from HAL QCD method and the mirage in the temporal correlation of the direct method

Both direct and HAL QCD methods are currently used to study the hadron interactions in lattice QCD. In the direct method, the eigen-energy of two-particle is measured from the temporal correlation. Due to the contamination of excited states, however, the direct method suffers from the fake eigen-energy problem, which we call the “mirage problem,” while the HAL QCD method can extract information from all elastic states by using the spatial correlation. In this work, we further investigate systematic uncertainties of the HAL QCD method such as the quark source operator dependence, the convergence of the derivative expansion of the non-local interaction kernel, and the single baryon saturation, which are found to be well controlled. We also confirm the consistency between the HAL QCD method and the Lüscher’s finite volume formula. Based on the HAL QCD potential, we quantitatively confirm that the mirage plateau in the direct method is indeed caused by the contamination of excited states.

Baryon interactions from lattice QCD with physical quark masses – Nuclear forces and ΞΞ forces –

We present the latest lattice QCD results for baryon interactions obtained at nearly physical quark masses. Nf = 2 + 1 nonperturbatively O(a)-improved Wilson quark action with stout smearing and Iwasaki gauge action are employed on the lattice of (96a)4 ≃(8.1fm)4 with a-1 ≃2.3 GeV, where mπ ≃146 MeV and mK ≃525 MeV. In this report, we study the two-nucleon systems and two-Ξ systems in 1S0 channel and 3S1-3D1 coupled channel, and extract central and tensor interactions by the HAL QCD method. We also present the results for the NΩ interaction in 5S2 channel which is relevant to the NΩ pair-momentum correlation in heavy-ion collision experiments.

Tetraquark candidateZc(3900) from coupled-channel scattering - how to extract hadronic interactions? -

We present recent progress of lattice QCD studies on hadronic interactions which play a crucial role to understand the properties of atomic nuclei and hadron resonances. There are two methods, the plateau method (or the direct method) and the HAL QCD method, to study the hadronic interactions. In the plateau method, the determination of a ground state energy from the temporal correlation functions of multi-hadron systems is a key to reliably extract the physical observables. It turns out that, due to the contamination of excited elastic scattering states nearby, one can easily be misled by a fake plateau into extracting the ground state energy. We introduce a consistency check (sanity check) which can rule out obviously false results obtained from a fake plateau, and find that none of the results obtained at the moment for two-baryon systems in the plateau method pass the test. On the other hand, the HAL QCD method is free from the fake-plateau problem. We investigate the systematic uncertainties of the HAL QCD method, which are found to be well controlled.

On the basis of the HAL QCD method, the structure of the tetraquark candidateZc(3900), which was experimentally reported ine+e-collisions, is studied by the s-wave two-meson coupled-channel scattering. The results show that theZc(3900) is not a conventional resonance but a threshold cusp. A semi-phenomenological analysis with the coupled-channel interaction to the experimentally observed decay mode is also presented to confirm the conclusion.

The properties of nuclear matter with lattice NN potential in relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock theory

We study the properties of nuclear matter with lattice nucleon-nucleon (NN) potential in the relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock (RBHF) theory. To use this potential in such a microscopic many-body theory, we firstly have to construct a one-boson-exchange potential (OBEP) based on the latest lattice NN potential. Three mesons, pion, σ meson, and ω meson, are considered. Their coupling constants and cut-off momenta are determined by fitting the on-shell behaviors and phase shifts of the lattice force, respectively. Therefore, we obtain two parameter sets of the OBEP potential (named as LOBEP1 and LOBEP2) with these two fitting ways. We calculate the properties of symmetric and pure neutron matter with LOBEP1 and LOBEP2. In non-relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock case, the binding energies of symmetric nuclear matter are around −3 and −5 MeV at saturation density, while it becomes −8 and −12 MeV in relativistic framework with ¹S₀, ³S₁, and ³D₁ channels using our two parameter sets. For the pure neutron matter, the equations of state in non-relativistic and relativistic cases are very similar due to only consideration ¹S₀ channel with isospin T = 1 case.