Calculation of the neutron electric dipole moment with two dynamical flavors of domain wall fermions

Abstract

We present a study of the neutron electric dipole moment ($\vec d_N$) within the framework of lattice QCD with two flavors of dynamical lig ht quarks. The dipole moment is sensitive to the topological structure of the gaug e fields, and accuracy can only be achieved by using dynamical, or sea quark, calc ulations. However, the topological charge evolves slowly in these calculations, le ading to a relatively large uncertainty in $\vec d_N$. It is shown, using quenched configurations, that a better sampling of the charge d istribution reduces this problem, but because the CP even part of the fermion determinant is absent, both the topological charge dis tribution and $\vec d_N$ are pathological in the chiral limit. We discuss the statistical and systematic uncertainties arising from the topological charge distr ibution and unphysical size of the quark mass in our calculations and prospects fo r eliminating them. Our calculations employ the RBC collaboration two flavor domain wall fermion and DBW2 gauge action lattices with inverse lattice spacing $a^{-1}\approx$ 1.7 GeV, physical volume $V\approx (2$ fm)$^3$, and light quark mass roughly equal to the strange quark mass ($m_{sea}=0.03 $ and 0.04). We determine a value of the electric dipole moment that is zero withi n (statistical) errors, $|\vec d_N| = -0.04(20)$ e-$θ$-fm at the smaller sea quark mass. Satisfactory results for the magnetic and electric form factors of the proton and neutron are also obtained and presented.