Precision charmonium and D physics from lattice QCD and determination of the charm quark mass

Abstract

I will describe recent results from the HPQCD collaboration using a new very accurate method for charm quarks in lattice QCD, that we have used in calculations including the full effect of u, d and s sea quarks. Multiple values of the lattice spacing and of the u, d and s sea quark masses allow us to extrapolate reliably, with a full error budget, to the real world. This opens up the field of charm physics to precision lattice QCD tests. So far we have calculated the D and D_s meson masses to 6 MeV, having fixed the charm quark mass from the eta_c meson. Our D and D_s decay constants (determined to 2%) make an interesting comparison to CLEO-c results as we await improved experimental errors. We are also able to determine the charm quark mass to an accuracy of 1% using charmonium correlators and high-order continuum QCD perturbation theory. Future calculations are briefly discussed.