Abstract: We study two- and three-meson systems composed either of pions or kaons at maximal isospin using Monte Carlo simulations of lattice QCD. Utilizing the stochastic LapH method, we are able to determine hundreds of two- and three-particle energy levels, in nine different momentum frames, with high precision. We fit these levels using the relativistic finite-volume formalism based on a generic effective field theory in order to determine the parameters of the two- and three-particle K-matrices. We find that the statistical precision of our spectra is sufficient to probe not only the dominant s-wave interactions, but also those in d waves. In particular, we determine for the first time a term in the three-particle K-matrix that contains two-particle d waves. We use three N-f = 2 + 1 CLS ensembles with pion masses of 200, 280, and 340 MeV. This allows us to study the chiral dependence of the scattering observables, and compare to the expectations of chiral perturbation theory.

Abstract: In this paper we study the nonperturbative structure of the SU(3) four-gluon vertex in the Landau gauge, concentrating on contributions quadratic in the metric. We employ an approximation scheme where “one-loop” diagrams are computed using fully dressed gluon and ghost propagators, and tree-level vertices. When a suitable kinematical configuration depending on a single momentum scale p is chosen, only two structures emerge: the tree-level four-gluon vertex, and a tensor orthogonal to it. A detailed numerical analysis reveals that the form factor associated with this latter tensor displays a change of sign (zero-crossing) in the deep infrared, and finally diverges logarithmically. The origin of this characteristic behavior is proven to be entirely due to the masslessness of the ghost propagators forming the corresponding ghost-loop diagram, in close analogy to a similar effect established for the three-gluon vertex. However, in the case at hand, and under the approximations employed, this particular divergence does not affect the form factor proportional to the tree-level tensor, which remains finite in the entire range of momenta, and deviates moderately from its naive tree-level value. It turns out that the kinematic configuration chosen is ideal for carrying out lattice simulations, because it eliminates from the connected Green's function all one-particle reducible contributions, projecting out the genuine one-particle irreducible vertex. Motivated by this possibility, we discuss in detail how a hypothetical lattice measurement of this quantity would compare to the results presented here, and the potential interference from an additional tensorial structure, allowed by Bose symmetry, but not encountered within our scheme.

Abstract: We present a study within the k(T)-factorisation scheme on single bottom quark production at the LHC. In particular, we calculate the rapidity and transverse momentum differential distributions for single bottom quark/anti-quark production. In our setup, the unintegrated gluon density is obtained from the NLx BFKL Green function whereas we included mass effects to the Lx heavy quark jet vertex. We compare our results to the corresponding distributions predicted by the usual collinear factorisation scheme. The latter were produced with Pythia 8.1.