18432298
Limitations of the heavy-baryon expansion as revealed by a pion-mass dispersion relation
The chiral expansion of nucleon properties such as mass, magnetic moment, and magnetic polarizability are investigated in the framework of chiral perturbation theory, with and without the heavy-baryon expansion. The analysis makes use of a pion-mass dispersion relation, which is shown to hold in both frameworks. The dispersion relation allows an ultraviolet cutoff to be implemented without compromising the symmetries. After renormalization, the leading-order heavy-baryon loops demonstrate a stronger dependence on the cutoff scale, which results in weakened convergence of the expansion. This conclusion is tested against the recent results of lattice quantum chromodynamics simulations for nucleon mass and isovector magnetic moment. In the case of the polarizability, the situation is even more dramatic as the heavy-baryon expansion is unable to reproduce large soft contributions to this quantity. Clearly, the heavy-baryon expansion is not suitable for every quantity.
53363791
Power counting regime of chiral effective field theory and beyond
Chiral effective field theory ({chi}EFT) complements numerical simulations of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) on a space-time lattice. It provides a model-independent formalism for connecting lattice simulation results at finite volume and a variety of quark masses to the physical world. The asymptotic nature of the chiral expansion places the focus on the first few terms of the expansion. Thus, knowledge of the power-counting regime (PCR) of {chi}EFT, where higher-order terms of the expansion may be regarded as negligible, is as important as knowledge of the expansion itself. Through the consideration of a variety of renormalization schemes and associated parameters, techniques to identify the PCR where results are independent of the renormalization scheme are established. The nucleon mass is considered as a benchmark for illustrating this general approach. Because the PCR is small, the numerical simulation results are also examined to search for the possible presence of an intrinsic scale which may be used in a nonperturbative manner to describe lattice simulation results outside of the PCR. Positive results that improve on the current optimistic application of chiral perturbation theory ({chi}PT) beyond the PCR are reported.
118478039
Pion-mass dispersion relation in the baryon sector
By looking at the complex plane of the pion-mass squared we establish a dispersion relation which the static quantities, such as baryon masses, magnetic moments, polarizabilities, should obey. This dispersion relation yields insight into the differences between the heavy-baryon and relativistic calculations in the baryon sector of chiral perturbation theory.
119199745
Chiral extrapolations for nucleon electric charge radii
Lattice simulations for the electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon yield insights into the internal structure of hadrons. The logarithmic divergence of the charge radius in the chiral limit poses an interesting challenge in achieving reliable predictions from finite-volume lattice simulations. Recent results near the physical pion mass are examined in order to confront the issue of how the chiral regime is approached. The electric charge radius of the nucleon presents a forum for achieving consistent finite-volume corrections. Newly-developed techniques within the framework of chiral effective field theory are used to achieve a robust extrapolation of the electric charge radius to the physical pion mass, and to infinite volume. The chiral extrapolations exhibit considerable finite-volume dependence; lattice box sizes of L > 7 fm are required in order to achieve a direct lattice simulation result within 2% of the infinite-volume value at the physical point. Predictions of the volume-dependence are provided to guide the interpretation of future lattice results.
122759085
Aspects of the Exceptional Supersymmetric Standard Model
The existence of weak scale supersymmetry (SUSY) is theoretically well motivated, because of its ability to stabilise the electro-weak symmetry breaking (EWSB) scale. One of the benefits of weak scale SUSY with conserved R-parity is that the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is absolutely stable and provides a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) candidate capable of accounting for the observed cold dark matter (CDM) relic density ΩCDMh ≈ 0.1. In particular, the lightest neutralino in SUSY models is an excellent such candidate, providing its mass, composition and interactions are suitably tuned to result in the correct value of ΩCDMh. The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) [1] provides the simplest supersymmet-