Leading-order hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the muon magnetic momentfrom lattice QCD

Abstract

We compute the leading order hadronic vacuum polarization (LO-HVP) contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, \((g_\mu-2)\), using lattice QCD. Calculations are performed with four flavors of 4-stout-improved staggered quarks, at physical quark masses and at six values of the lattice spacing down to 0.064~fm. All strong isospin breaking and electromagnetic effects are accounted for to leading order. The infinite-volume limit is taken thanks to simulations performed in volumes of sizes up to 11~fm. Our result for the LO-HVP contribution to \((g_\mu-2)\) has a total uncertainty of 0.6\%. Surprisingly, our result eliminates the need to invoke new physics to explain the measurement of \((g_\mu-2)\).