Comparison between models of QCD with and without dynamical charm quarks

Abstract

We investigate the influence of dynamical charm quarks on observables that depend explicitly on the charm quark fields, like the pseudo-scalar and vector masses $m_{\eta_c}$ and $m_{J/\psi}$, the hyperfine splitting $(m_{J/\psi}-m_{\eta_c})/m_{\eta_c}$, the charm quark mass and the meson decay constants. For this purpose, instead of working in full QCD we study a simplified setup. We simulate two theories: $N_f= 0$ QCD and QCD with $N_f= 2$ dynamical quarks at the charm mass. The absence of light quarks allows us to reach extremely fine lattice spacings (0.02 fm < a < 0.05 fm) which are crucial for reliable continuum extrapolations. Our main result is a comparison of various quantities in the continuum limit. For the hyperfine splitting we find that the effects of a dynamical charm quark are below our statistical precision of $2\%$.