QCD+QED lattice calculation of hadronic decay rates

Abstract

Isospin is an almost exact symmetry of strong interactions and the corrections to the isosymmetric limit are, in general, at the percent level. For several hadronic quantities relevant for flavour physics phenomenology, such as pseudoscalar meson masses or the kaon leptonic and semileptonic decay rates, these effects are of the same order of magnitude of the uncertainties quoted in current large-scale QCD simulations on the lattice and cannot be neglected anymore. In this contribution I discuss some recent results for the leptonic decay rates of light pseudoscalar mesons obtained by the Soton--RM123 Collaboration including the leading-order electromagnetic and strong isospin-breaking corrections in first principles lattice simulations. The adopted strategy is within the reach of present lattice technologies and it allows to determine electromagnetic corrections to physical observables for which delicate cancellations of infrared divergences occur in the intermediate steps of the calculation. The application of the developed method to the study of heavy-light meson and semileptonic decay rates is currently underway.