Chiral perturbation theory for all-staggered heavy-light mesons

Abstract

In highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) simulations by the HPQCD, MILC, and\nFermilab Lattice collaborations, both the light quarks and the charm quark are\nstaggered. We extend chiral perturbation theory for staggered quarks to include\nsuch all-staggered heavy-light mesons. We assume that the heavy quark action is\nsufficiently improved that we may take $a m_Q <<1$ (where $m_Q$ is the heavy\nquark mass), but also that $m_Q>>\\Lambda_{QCD}$ so that a continuum heavy quark\nexpansion is appropriate. We develop this effective chiral theory through\nnext-to-leading order, and use it to study the pattern of taste splittings in\nthe heavy-light meson and to compute the leptonic decay constant of the\nheavy-light meson to one-loop in the chiral expansion.\n