Lattice study of large $N_c$ QCD

Abstract

We present a lattice simulation study of large $N_c$ regularities of meson and baryon spectroscopy in $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory with two flavors of dynamical fundamental representation fermions. Systems investigated include $N_c=2$, 3, 4, and 5, over a range of fermion masses parametrized by a squared pseudoscalar to vector meson mass ratio between about 0.2 to 0.7. Good agreement with large $N_c$ scaling is observed in the static potential, in meson masses and decay constants, and in baryon spectroscopy. This is an update of the published version of the paper (Phys. Rev. D94 (2016) 034506).

35 pages, 23 figures. SU(4) and SU(5) results updated. Erratum published; this is an integral replacement of the paper