Trace anomaly form factors from lattice QCD
Bigeng Wang, Fangcheng He, Gen Wang, Terrence Draper, Jian Liang, Keh-Fei Liu, Yi-Bo Yang
Abstract
The hadron mass can be obtained through the calculation of the trace of the energy-momentum tensor in the hadron which includes the trace anomaly and sigma terms. The anomaly due to conformal symmetry breaking is believed to be an important ingredient for hadron mass generation and confinement. In this work, we will present the calculation of the glue part of the trace anomaly form factors of the pion up to <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:msup><a:mi>Q</a:mi><a:mn>2</a:mn></a:msup><a:mo>∼</a:mo><a:mn>4.3</a:mn><a:mtext> </a:mtext><a:mtext> </a:mtext><a:msup><a:mi>GeV</a:mi><a:mn>2</a:mn></a:msup></a:math> and the nucleon up to <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><c:msup><c:mi>Q</c:mi><c:mn>2</c:mn></c:msup><c:mo>∼</c:mo><c:mn>1</c:mn><c:mtext> </c:mtext><c:mtext> </c:mtext><c:msup><c:mi>GeV</c:mi><c:mn>2</c:mn></c:msup></c:math>. The calculations are performed on a domain wall fermion ensemble with overlap valence quarks at seven valence pion masses varying from <e:math xmlns:e="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><e:mo>∼</e:mo><e:mn>250</e:mn></e:math> to <g:math xmlns:g="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><g:mo>∼</g:mo><g:mn>540</g:mn><g:mtext> </g:mtext><g:mtext> </g:mtext><g:mi>MeV</g:mi></g:math>, including the unitary point <i:math xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><i:mo>∼</i:mo><i:mn>340</i:mn><i:mtext> </i:mtext><i:mtext> </i:mtext><i:mi>MeV</i:mi></i:math>. We calculate the radius of the glue trace anomaly for the pion and the nucleon from the <k:math xmlns:k="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><k:mi>z</k:mi></k:math> expansion. By performing a two-dimensional Fourier transform on the glue trace anomaly form factors in the infinite momentum frame with no energy transfer, we also obtain their spatial distributions for several valence quark masses. The results are qualitatively extrapolated to the physical valence pion mass with systematic errors from the unphysical sea quark mass, discretization effects in the renormalization sum rule, and finite-volume effects to be addressed in the future. We find the pion’s form factor changes sign, as does its spatial distribution, for light quark masses. This explains how the trace anomaly contribution to the pion mass approaches zero toward the chiral limit. Published by the American Physical Society 2024