Exotic And Excited State Radiative Transitions In Charmonium From Lattice Qcd

We discuss recent progress in extracting the excited meson spectrum and radiative transition form factors using lattice QCD. We mention results in the charmonium sector, including the first lattice QCD calculation of radiative transition rates involving excited charmonium states, highlighting results for high spin and exotic states. We present recent results on a highly excited isovector meson spectrum from dynamical anisotropic lattices. Using carefully constructed operators we show how the continuum spin of extracted states can be reliably identified and confidently extract excited states, states with exotic quantum numbers and states of high spin. This spectrum includes the first spin-four state extracted from lattice QCD. We conclude with some comments on future prospects.

Properties of excited mesons are studied using a lattice QCD simulation of a system comparable to charmonium. We extract a spectrum of states, including those with manifestly exotic quantum numbers. Radiative transition form-factors are also computed, in particular the transition from exotic ·c1 to J /È 3 which is found to be large on the usual scale of magnetic dipole transitions.

Radiative transitions between charmonium states offer an insight into the internal structure of heavy-quark bound states within QCD. We compute, for the first time within lattice QCD, the transition form-factors of various multipolarities between the lightest few charmonium states. In addition, we compute the experimentally unobservable, but physically interesting vector form-factors of the [eta]{sub c}, J/[psi] and [chi]{sub c0}. To this end we apply an ambitious combination of lattice techniques, computing three-point functions with heavy domain wall fermions on an anisotropic lattice within the quenched approximation. With an anisotropy [xi] = 3 at a{sub s} ≈ 0.1 fm we find a reasonable gross spectrum and a hyperfine splitting ≈90 MeV, which compares favorably with other improved actions. In general, after extrapolation of lattice data at non-zero Q2 to the photopoint, our results agree within errors with all well measured experimental values. Furthermore, results are compared with the expectations of simple quark models where we find that many features are in agreement; beyond this we propose the possibility of constraining such models using our extracted values of physically unobservable quantities such as the J/[psi] quadrupole moment. We conclude that our methods are successful and propose to apply them to the problem of radiative transitions involving hybrid mesons, with the eventual goal of predicting hybrid meson photoproduction rates at the GlueX experiment.

Charmonium is an attractive system for the application of lattice QCD methods. While the sub-threshold spectrum has been considered in some detail in previous works, it is only very recently that excited and higher-spin states and further properties such as radiative transitions and two-photon decays have come to be calculated. I report on this recent progress with reference to work done at Jefferson Lab.

We apply the variational method with a large basis of interpolating operators to demonstrate the feasibility of extracting multiple excited states in charmonium from lattice QCD. The calculation is performed in the quenched approximation to QCD, using the clover fermion action on an anisotropic lattice. A crucial element of our approach is a knowledge of the continuum limit of the interpolating operators, providing important additional information on the spin assignment of the states, even at a single value of the lattice spacing. Though we find excited-state masses that are systematically high with respect to the quark potential model, and the experimental masses where known, we attribute this as most likely an artifact of the quenched approximation.

Working with a large basis of covariant derivative-based meson interpolating fields we demonstrate the feasibility of reliably extracting multiple excited states using a variational method. The study is performed on quenched anisotropic lattices with clover quarks at the charm mass. We demonstrate how a knowledge of the continuum limit of a lattice interpolating field can give additional spin-assignment information, even at a single lattice spacing, via the overlap factors of interpolating field and state. Excited state masses are systematically high with respect to quark potential model predictions and, where they exist, experimental states. We conclude that this is most likely a result of the quenched approximation.

Charmonium is an attractive system for the application of lattice QCD methods owing to the possibility of computing with the physical quark mass in a reasonable time. While the sub-threshold spectrum has been considered in some detail in previous works, it is only very recently that further properties such as radiative transitions and two-photon decays have come to be calculated; herein we discuss this recent progress.

CIPANP 2009 explores areas of common interest between nuclear physicists, high energy (particle) physicists and astrophysicists. These areas range from studies of the strong interactions that bind nuclei together to physics of the very early Universe and include such topics as neutrinos, hadron physics, spin physics, heavy ion physics, QCD and heavy flavor physics. The Conference papers include descriptions of searches for "new physics", phenomena that cannot be accounted for by current theories.