English

Kaon radiative leptonic decay rates from lattice QCD simulations at the physical point

High Energy Physics - Lattice 2025-08-19 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We present a lattice QCD calculation of the radiative leptonic decay rates of the kaon, improving upon our previous work, arXiv:2006.05358. Our analysis uses gauge ensembles generated by the Extended Twisted Mass Collaboration (ETMC) with Nf=2+1+1N_{f} = 2 + 1 + 1 flavors of Wilson-clover twisted mass fermions. For the first time, we go beyond the electroquenched approximation by including quark-disconnected contributions. Several key improvements have been implemented: (i) the simulations are now performed directly at physical light- and strange-quark masses, (ii) finite-size effects are carefully investigated using lattices with spatial extents ranging from L3.8fmL \simeq 3.8\,\mathrm{fm} to L7.7fmL \simeq 7.7\,\mathrm{fm}, and (iii) the continuum extrapolation is based on three lattice spacings in the range a[0.08,0.058]fma \in [0.08, 0.058]\,\mathrm{fm}. As a result of the high-precision determination of the relevant correlation functions, we reduce the uncertainties on both the axial and vector form factors by nearly a factor of two compared to our previous analysis. When compared to experimental measurements in the electron channel (KeνˉeγK^- \to e^- \bar{\nu}_e \gamma), our results show a tension -- at the level of 2.62.6 standard deviations -- with respect to KLOE data. On the other hand, they are compatible with measurements from the E36 Collaboration at J-PARC. In the muonic decay channel (KμνˉμγK^- \to \mu^- \bar{\nu}_\mu \gamma), we confirm the tensions, already observed in our previous study, between lattice QCD predictions and ISTRA+ and OKA data, which are both primarily sensitive to the value of the negative-helicity form factor FF^{-}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.08680,
  title  = {Kaon radiative leptonic decay rates from lattice QCD simulations at the physical point},
  author = {R. Di Palma and R. Frezzotti and G. Gagliardi and V. Lubicz and G. Martinelli and C. T. Sachrajda and F. Sanfilippo and S. Simula and N. Tantalo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.08680},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

32 pages, 20 figures, 6 tables. Published version