Electromagnetic Corrections in Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory

Abstract

To reduce errors in light-quark mass determinations, it is now necessary to consider electromagnetic contributions to light-meson masses. Calculations using staggered quarks and quenched photons are currently underway. Suitably-extended chiral perturbation theory is necessary to extrapolate the lattice data to the physical limit. Here we give (preliminary) results for light-meson masses using staggered chiral perturbation theory including electromagnetism, and discuss the extent to which quenched-photon simulations can improve quark-mass calculations.