Exploration of nucleon structure in lattice QCD with chiral quarks

Abstract

In this work, we calculate various nucleon structure observables using the fundamental theory of quarks and gluons, QCD, simulated on a lattice. In our simulations, we use the full QCD action including Nf = 2+ 1 dynamical quarks in the SU(2) isospin limit. We compute the nucleon vector and axial vector form factors as well as the generalized form factors, and analyze the nucleon charge, magnetization, and axial radii, anomalous magnetic moment, and axial charge. In addition, we compute quark contributions to the nucleon momentum and spin. Our calculation is novel for three reasons. It is a first full QCD calculation using both sea and valence chiral quarks with pion masses as low as m[pi] = 300 MeV. We develop a method to keep systematic effects in the lattice nucleon matrix elements under control, which helps us to obtain a better signal-to-noise ratio, to achieve higher precision and to test the applicability of low-energy effective theories. Finally, we compare the results from lattice QCD calculations with two different discretization methods and lattice spacings, with the rest of the calculation technique kept equal. The level of agreement between these results indicates that our calculations are not significantly affected by discretization effects.