Several general issues concerning the present review are thoroughly discussed in Sec. 1.1 of our initial 2010 paper ¹ and we encourage the reader to consult the relevant pages. In the remainder of the present subsection, we focus on a few important points. Though the discussion has been duly updated, it is essentially that of Sec. 1.2 of the 2013 review ².

The present review aims to achieve two distinct goals: first, to provide a description of the work done on the lattice concerning low-energy particle physics; and, second, to draw conclusions on the basis of that work, summarizing the results obtained for the various quantities of physical interest.

The core of the information about the work done on the lattice is presented in the form of tables, which not only list the various results, but also describe the quality of the data that underlie them. We consider it important that this part of the review represents a generally accepted description of the work done. For this reason, we explicitly specify the quality requirements⁶ used and provide sufficient details in appendices so that the reader can verify the information given in the tables.

On the other hand, the conclusions drawn on the basis of the available lattice results are the responsibility of FLAG alone. Preferring to err on the side of caution, in several cases we draw conclusions that are more conservative than those resulting from a plain weighted average of the available lattice results. This cautious approach is usually adopted when the average is dominated by a single lattice result, or when only one lattice result is available for a given quantity. In such cases one does not have the same degree of confidence in results and errors as when there is agreement among several different calculations using different approaches. The reader should keep in mind that the degree of confidence cannot be quantified, and it is not reflected in the quoted errors.

Each discretization has its merits, but also its shortcomings. For most topics covered in this review we have an increasingly broad database, and for most quantities lattice calculations based on totally different discretizations are now available. This is illustrated by the dense population of the tables and figures in most parts of this review. Those calculations that do satisfy our quality criteria indeed lead to consistent results, confirming universality within the accuracy reached. In our opinion, the consistency between independent lattice results, obtained with different discretizations, methods, and simulation parameters, is an important test of lattice QCD, and observing such consistency also provides further evidence that systematic errors are fully under control.

In the sections dealing with heavy quarks and with $\alpha_s$, the situation is not the same. Since the $b$-quark mass cannot be resolved with current lattice spacings, all lattice methods for treating $b$ quarks use effective field theory at some level. This introduces additional complications not present in the light-quark sector. An overview of the issues specific to heavy-quark quantities is given in the introduction of Sec. 8. For $B$ and $D$ meson leptonic decay constants, there already exists a good number of different independent calculations that use different heavy-quark methods, but there are only one or two independent calculations of semileptonic $B$ and $D$ meson form factors and $B$ meson mixing parameters. For $\alpha_s$, most lattice methods involve a range of scales that need to be resolved and controlling the systematic error over a large range of scales is more demanding. The issues specific to determinations of the strong coupling are summarized in Sec. 9.

Number of sea quarks in lattice simulations:

Lattice QCD simulations currently involve two, three or four flavours of dynamical quarks. Most simulations set the masses of the two lightest quarks to be equal, while the strange and charm quarks, if present, are heavier (and tuned to lie close to their respective physical values). Our notation for these simulations indicates which quarks are nondegenerate, e.g. $N_f =2+1$ if $m_u=m_d<m_s$ and $N_f =2+1+1$ if $m_u=m_d <m_s <m_c$. Calculations with $N_f = 2$, i.e. two degenerate dynamical flavours, often include strange valence quarks interacting with gluons, so that bound states with the quantum numbers of the kaons can be studied, albeit neglecting strange sea-quark fluctuations. The quenched approximation ($N_f = 0$), in which sea quark contributions are omitted, has uncontrolled systematic errors and is no longer used in modern lattice simulations with relevance to phenomenology. Accordingly, we will review results obtained with $N_f =2$, $N_f =2+1$, and $N_f =2+1+1$, but omit earlier results with $N_f = 0$. The only exception concerns the QCD coupling constant $\alpha_s$. Since this observable does not require valence light quarks, it is theoretically well defined also in the $N_f = 0$ theory, which is simply pure gluodynamics. The $N_f$-dependence of $\alpha_s$, or more precisely of the related quantity $r_0\Lambda_{MS}$, is a theoretical issue of considerable interest; here $r_0$ is a quantity with the dimension of length, which sets the physical scale, as discussed in Appendix A.2 in the Glossary. We stress, however, that only results with $N_f$ ≥ 3 are used to determine the physical value of αs at a high scale.

Lattice actions, simulation parameters and scale setting:

The remarkable progress in the precision of lattice calculations is due to improved algorithms, better computing resources and, last but not least, conceptual developments. Examples of the latter are improved actions that reduce lattice artifacts and actions that preserve chiral symmetry to very good approximation. A concise characterization of the various discretizations that underlie the results reported in the present review is given in Appendix A.1 in the Glossary.

Physical quantities are computed in lattice simulations in units of the lattice spacing so that they are dimensionless. For example, the pion decay constant that is obtained from a simulation is $f_\pi a$, where $a$ is the spacing between two neighboring lattice sites. To convert these results to physical units requires knowledge of the lattice spacing a at the fixed values of the bare QCD parameters (quark masses and gauge coupling) used in the simulation. This is achieved by requiring agreement between the lattice calculation and experimental measurement of a known quantity, which thus “sets the scale” of a given simulation. A few details on this procedure are provided in Appendix A.2 in the Glossary.

Renormalization and scheme dependence:

Several of the results covered by this review, such as quark masses, the gauge coupling, and B-parameters, are for quantities defined in a given renormalization scheme and at a specific renormalization scale. The schemes employed (e.g. regularization-independent MOM schemes) are often chosen because of their specific merits when combined with the lattice regularization. For a brief discussion of their properties, see Appendix A.3 in the Glossary. The conversion of the results, obtained in these so-called intermediate schemes, to more familiar regularization schemes, such as the MSbar-scheme, is done with the aid of perturbation theory. It must be stressed that the renormalization scales accessible in simulations are limited, because of the presence of an ultraviolet (UV) cutoff of ∼ $\pi/a$. To safely match to MSbar, a scheme defined in perturbation theory, Renormalization Group (RG) running to higher scales is performed, either perturbatively or nonperturbatively (the latter using finite-size scaling techniques).

Extrapolations:

Because of limited computing resources, lattice simulations are often performed at unphysically heavy pion masses, although results at the physical point have become increasingly common. Further, numerical simulations must be done at nonzero lattice spacing, and in a finite (four-dimensional) volume. In order to obtain physical results, lattice data are obtained at a sequence of pion masses and a sequence of lattice spacings, and then extrapolated to the physical pion mass and to the continuum limit. In principle, an extrapolation to infinite volume is also required. However, for most quantities discussed in this review, finite-volume effects are exponentially small in the linear extent of the lattice in units of the pion mass and, in practice, one often verifies volume independence by comparing results obtained on a few different physical volumes, holding other parameters equal. To control the associated systematic uncertainties, these extrapolations are guided by effective theories. For light-quark actions, the lattice-spacing dependence is described by Symanzik’s effective theory; for heavy quarks, this can be extended and/or supplemented by other effective theories such as Heavy-Quark Effective Theory (HQET). The pion-mass dependence can be parameterized with Chiral Perturbation Theory (χPT), which takes into account the Nambu-Goldstone nature of the lowest excitations that occur in the presence of light quarks. Similarly, one can use Heavy-Light Meson Chiral Perturbation Theory (HMχPT) to extrapolate quantities involving mesons composed of one heavy ($b$ or $c$) and one light quark. One can combine Symanzik’s effective theory with χPT to simultaneously extrapolate to the physical pion mass and the continuum; in this case, the form of the effective theory depends on the discretization. See Appendix A.4 in the Glossary for a brief description of the different variants in use and some useful references. Finally, χPT can also be used to estimate the size of finite-volume effects measured in units of the inverse pion mass, thus providing information on the systematic error due to finite-volume effects in addition to that obtained by comparing simulations at different volumes.

Critical slowing down:

The lattice spacings reached in recent simulations go down to 0.05 fm or even smaller. In this regime, long autocorrelation times slow down the sampling of the configurations. Many groups check for autocorrelations in a number of observables, including the topological charge, for which a rapid growth of the autocorrelation time is observed with decreasing lattice spacing. This is often referred to as topological freezing. A solution to the problem consists in using open boundary conditions in time, instead of the more common antiperiodic ones. More recently two other approaches have been proposed, one based on a multiscale thermalization algorithm and another based on defining QCD on a nonorientable manifold. The problem is also touched upon in Sec. 9.2, where it is stressed that attention must be paid to this issue. While large scale simulations with open boundary conditions are already far advanced, unfortunately so far no results reviewed here have been obtained with any of the above methods. It is usually assumed that the continuum limit can be reached by extrapolation from the existing simulations and that potential systematic errors due to the long autocorrelation times have been adequately controlled.

Simulation algorithms and numerical errors:

Most of the modern lattice-QCD simulations use exact algorithms, which do not produce any systematic errors when exact arithmetic is available. In reality, one uses numerical calculations at double (or in some cases even single) precision, and some errors are unavoidable. More importantly, the inversion of the Dirac operator is carried out iteratively and it is truncated once some accuracy is reached, which is another source of potential systematic error. In most cases, these errors have been confirmed to be much less than the statistical errors. In the following we assume that this source of error is negligible. Some of the most recent simulations use an inexact algorithm in order to speed-up the computation, though it may produce systematic effects. Currently available tests indicate that errors from the use of inexact algorithms are under control.