Heavy-quark expansion at leading power for local QCD operators in gradient flow
Abstract
Gradient flow provides finite-flow-time QCD operators, whose matrix elements can be computed on the lattice and related to renormalized QCD operators through perturbative matching. We develop a matching framework that relates local flowed-QCD operators to the corresponding operators in heavy-quark effective theory (HQET) at leading power in the heavy-quark expansion. By combining the flowed-QCD-to-HQET matching relation with conventional QCD-to-HQET matching, we obtain a mass-dependent conversion relation between flowed-QCD operators and renormalized QCD operators. As a first application, we calculate the one-loop matching coefficients for heavy-light currents and derive the corresponding conversion coefficients. We find that heavy-quark mass effects in the matching and conversion coefficients can be numerically important when the flow scale is not much larger than the heavy-quark mass scale, highlighting the need for mass-dependent matching in precision lattice applications of gradient flow to heavy-quark observables.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{gui2026heavyquark,
title = {{Heavy-quark expansion at leading power for local QCD operators in gradient flow}},
author = {Yun-Han Gui and Xin-Qiang Li and Xiang-Peng Wang and Ya-Dong Yang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.15138},
eprint = {2609.15138},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15138},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Heavy-quark expansion at leading power for local QCD operators in gradient flow
AU - Yun-Han Gui
AU - Xin-Qiang Li
AU - Xiang-Peng Wang
AU - Ya-Dong Yang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/14
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.15138
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15138
AB - Gradient flow provides finite-flow-time QCD operators, whose matrix elements can be computed on the lattice and related to renormalized QCD operators through perturbative matching. We develop a matching framework that relates local flowed-QCD operators to the corresponding operators in heavy-quark effective theory (HQET) at leading power in the heavy-quark expansion. By combining the flowed-QCD-to-HQET matching relation with conventional QCD-to-HQET matching, we obtain a mass-dependent conversion relation between flowed-QCD operators and renormalized QCD operators. As a first application, we calculate the one-loop matching coefficients for heavy-light currents and derive the corresponding conversion coefficients. We find that heavy-quark mass effects in the matching and conversion coefficients can be numerically important when the flow scale is not much larger than the heavy-quark mass scale, highlighting the need for mass-dependent matching in precision lattice applications of gradient flow to heavy-quark observables.
ER -