First lattice study of low-energy charmonium-hadron interaction

We study the scattering lengths of charmonia (J/psi and eta_c) with light hadrons (pi, rho and N) by the quenched lattice QCD simulations on 24x24x24x48, 32x32x32x48 and 48x48x48x48 lattices with the lattice spacing a = 0.068 fm. The scattering length is extracted by using the Luscher's phase-shift formula together with the measurement of the energy shift Delta E of two hadrons on the lattice. We find that there exist attractive interactions in all channels, J/psi(eta_c)-pi, J/psi(eta_c)-rho and J/psi(eta_c)-N: The s-wave J/psi-pi (eta_c-pi) scattering length is determined as 0.0119+-0.0039 fm (0.0113+-0.0035 fm) and the corresponding elastic cross section at the threshold becomes 0.018+0.013-0.010 mb (0.016+0.011-0.008 mb). Also, the J/psi-N (eta_c-N) spin-averaged scattering length is 0.71+-0.48 fm (0.70+-0.66 fm), which is at least an order of magnitude larger than the charmonium-pion scattering length. The volume dependence of the energy shifts is also investigated to check the expected 1/L^3 behavior of Delta E at a large spatial size L.