Unquenched Charmonium with NRQCD

Abstract

We present the results from a series of lattice simulations of the charmonium system using a highly-improved NRQCD action, both in the quenched approximation, and with n_f = 2 light dynamical quarks. The spectra show some evidence for quenching effects of roughly 10% in the S- and P-hyperfine spin splittings---probably too small to account for the severe underestimates in these quantities seen in previous quenched charmonium simulations. We also find estimates for the magnitude of other systematic effects---in particular, the choice of the tadpole factor can alter spin splittings at the 10-20% level, and radiative corrections may be as large as 40% for charmonium. We conclude that quenching is just one of a collection of important effects that require attention in precision heavy-quark simulations.