Sigma terms from an SU(3) chiral extrapolation

Abstract

We report a new analysis of lattice simulation results for octet baryon masses in 2+1-flavor QCD, with an emphasis on a precise determination of the pion-nucleon and strangeness nucleon sigma terms. A controlled chiral extrapolation of a recent PACS-CS Collaboration data set yields baryon masses which exhibit remarkable agreement both with experimental values at the physical point and with the results of independent lattice QCD simulations at unphysical meson masses. Using the Feynman-Hellmann relation, we evaluate sigma commutators for all octet baryons. The small statistical uncertainty and considerably smaller model dependence allows a significantly more precise determination of the pion-nucleon sigma commutator and the strangeness sigma term than hitherto possible, subject to an unresolved issue concerning the lattice scale setting.