From Spectroscopy to the Strong Coupling Constant with Heavy Wilson Quarks

In this work we present lattice calculations of the masses of P-wave mesons using Monte Carlo simulations. Our valence fermions are defined by the Wilson action. Our gauge fields are generated with both dynamical staggered fermions at a lattice coupling $\beta\equiv 6/g^2=5.6$ for sea quark masses of $am_q=0.010$ and 0.025, and in the quenched approximation at $\beta=6.0$. We present results for charm and charmonium spectroscopy and use them to compute the strong coupling constant $\alpha_s$. We compare our results to those of other recent lattice calculations and experiments.