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Unified chiral analysis of the vector meson spectrum from lattice QCD

The chiral extrapolation of the vector meson mass calculated in partially-quenched lattice simulations is investigated. The leading one-loop corrections to the vector meson mass are derived for partially-quenched QCD. A large sample of lattice results from the CP-PACS Collaboration is analysed, with explicit corrections for finite lattice spacing artifacts. To incorporate the effect of the opening decay channel as the chiral limit is approached, the extrapolation is studied using a necessary phenomenological extension of chiral effective field theory. This chiral analysis also provides a quantitative estimate of the leading finite volume corrections. It is found that the discretisation, finite-volume and partial quenching effects can all be very well described in this framework, producing an extrapolated value of M_ρin excellent agreement with experiment. This procedure is also compared with extrapolations based on polynomial forms, where the results are much less enlightening.