The nucleon mass and pion-nucleon sigma term from a chiral analysis of Nf = 2+1 lattice QCD world data

Abstract

Fits of the p^4 covariant SU(2) baryon chiral perturbation theory to lattice QCD nucleon mass data from several collaborations for 2 and 2+1 flavors are presented. We consider contributions from explicit Delta(1232) degrees of freedom, finite volume and finite spacing corrections. We emphasize here our Nf=2+1 study. We obtain low-energy constants of natural size that are compatible with the rather linear pion-mass dependence of the nucleon mass observed in lattice QCD. We report a value for the pion-nucleon sigma term of 41(5)(4) MeV for the 2 flavor case and 52(3)(8) MeV for 2+1 flavors.

Comments: Contribution to the NSTAR 2013 conference, 4 pages, 4 figures