Light quark masses from scalar sum rules

Abstract

In this work, the mass of the strange quark is calculated from QCD sum rules for the divergence of the strangeness-changing vector current. The phenomenological scalar spectral function which enters the sum rule is determined from our previous work on strangeness-changing scalar form factors [1]. For the running strange mass in the MS_bar scheme, we find m_s(2 GeV) = 99 +- 16 MeV. Making use of this result and the light-quark mass ratios obtained from chiral perturbation theory, we are also able to extract the masses of the lighter quarks m_u and m_d. We then obtain m_u(2 GeV) = 2.9 +- 0.6 MeV and m_d(2 GeV) = 5.2 +- 0.9 MeV. In addition, we present an updated value for the light quark condensate.