Lattice QCD phase diagram in and away from the strong coupling limit.

We study lattice QCD with four flavors of staggered quarks. In the limit of infinite gauge coupling, "dual" variables can be introduced, which render the finite-density sign problem mild and allow a full determination of the µ-T phase diagram by Monte Carlo simulations, also in the chiral limit. However, the continuum limit coincides with the weak coupling limit. We propose a strong-coupling expansion approach towards the continuum limit. We show first results, including the phase diagram and its chiral critical point, from this expansion truncated at next-to-leading order.

Nuclear physics from lattice QCD at strong coupling.

We study numerically the strong coupling limit of lattice QCD with one flavor of massless staggered quarks. We determine the complete phase diagram as a function of temperature and chemical potential, including a tricritical point. We clarify the nature of the low temperature dense phase, which is strongly bound "nuclear" matter. This strong binding is explained by the nuclear potential, which we measure. Finally, we determine, from this first-principles limiting case of QCD, the masses of "atomic nuclei" up to A=12 "carbon".

Evidence for diquarks in lattice QCD.

Diquarks may play an important role in hadron spectroscopy, baryon decays, and color superconductivity. We investigate the existence of diquark correlations in lattice QCD by considering systematically all the lowest energy diquark channels in a color gauge-invariant setup. We measure mass differences between the various channels and show that the positive parity scalar diquark is the lightest. Quark-quark correlations inside the diquark are clearly seen in this channel, and yield a diquark size of O(1) fm.

N-to-delta electromagnetic-transition form factors from lattice QCD.

The magnetic dipole (M1), the electric quadrupole (E2), and the Coulomb quadrupole (C2) amplitudes for gammaN-->Delta are calculated in quenched lattice QCD. Using a new method, which combines an optimal choice of interpolating fields for the Delta and an overconstrained analysis, we obtain statistically accurate results for the dipole form factor and for the ratios R(EM)=E2/M1 and R(SM)=C2/M1, up to momentum transfer squared 1.5 GeV2. We show for the first time, using lattice QCD, that both R(EM) and R(SM) are nonzero and negative, in qualitative agreement with experiment and indicating the presence of deformation in the N/Delta system.