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Ab initio calculation of the neutron-proton mass difference

2015; American Association for the Advancement of Science; Volume: 347; Issue: 6229 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1126/science.1257050

1095-9203

Sz. Borsányi, Stephan Dürr, Z. Fodor, Christian Hoelbling, S. D. Katz, Stefan Krieg, L. Lellouch, Thomas Lippert, Antonin Portelli, K. K. Szabó, Brigitta Tóth,

Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena

The existence and stability of atoms rely on the fact that neutrons are more massive than protons. The measured mass difference is only 0.14\% of the average of the two masses. A slightly smaller or larger value would have led to a dramatically different universe. Here, we show that this difference results from the competition between electromagnetic and mass isospin breaking effects. We performed lattice quantum-chromodynamics and quantum-electrodynamics computations with four nondegenerate Wilson fermion flavors and computed the neutron-proton mass-splitting with an accuracy of $300$ kilo-electron volts, which is greater than $0$ by $5$ standard deviations. We also determine the splittings in the $\Sigma$, $\Xi$, $D$ and $\Xi_{cc}$ isospin multiplets, exceeding in some cases the precision of experimental measurements.