Nonperturbative comparison of clover and HISQ quarks in lattice QCD and the properties of the phi meson

Understand

We compare correlators for pseudoscalar and vector mesons made from valence strange quarks using the clover quark and highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) formalisms in full lattice QCD.

• We use fully nonperturbative methods to normalise vector and axial vector current operators made from HISQ quarks, clover quarks and from combining HISQ and clover fields.
• This allows us to test expectations for the renormalisation factors based on perturbative QCD, with implications for the error budget of lattice QCD calculations of the matrix elements of clover-staggered $b$-light weak currents, as well as further HISQ calculations of the hadronic vacuum polarisation.
• We also compare the approach to the (same) continuum limit in clover and HISQ formalisms for the mass and decay constant of the $\phi$ meson.