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We calculate the contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment hadronic vacuum polarization from the connected diagrams of up and down quarks, omitting electromagnetism. We employ QCD gauge-field configurations with dynamical u, d, s, and c quarks and the physical pion mass, and analyze five ensembles with lattice spacings ranging from a≈0.06 to 0.15 fm. The up- and down-quark masses in our simulations have equal masses ml. We obtain, in this world where all pions have the mass of the π0, 1010allμ(conn.)=637.8(8.8), in agreement with independent lattice-QCD calculations. We then combine this value with published lattice-QCD results for the connected contributions from strange, charm, and bottom quarks, and an estimate of the uncertainty due to the fact that our calculation does not include strong-isospin breaking, electromagnetism, or contributions from quark-disconnected diagrams. Our final result for the total O(α²) hadronic-vacuum polarization to the muon's anomalous magnetic moment is 1010aHVP,LOμ=699(15)u,d(1)s,c,b, where the errors are from the light-quark and heavy-quark contributions, respectively. Our result agrees with both ab-initio lattice-QCD calculations and phenomenological determinations from experimental e+e--scattering data. It is 1.3σ below the "no new physics" value of the hadronic-vacuum-polarization contribution inferred from combining the BNL E821 measurement of aμ with theoretical calculations of the other contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) Nf = 2 + 1 + 1 MILC ensembles with five different values of the lattice spacing, including four ensembles with physical quark masses, we perform the most precise computation to date of the K → πℓν vector form factor at zero momentum transfer, f+K0π- (0) = 0.9696 (15)stat (12)syst. This is the first calculation that includes the dominant finite-volume effects, as calculated in chiral perturbation theory at next-to-leading order. Our result for the form factor provides a direct determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix element |Vus| = 0.22333(44)f+(0) (42)exp, with a theory error that is, for the first time, at the same level as the experimental error. The uncertainty of the semileptonic determination is now similar to that from leptonic decays and the ratio fK+/fπ+, which uses |Vud| as input. Our value of |Vus| is in tension at the 2-2.6σ level both with the determinations from leptonic decays and with the unitarity of the CKM matrix. In the test of CKM unitarity in the first row, the current limiting factor is the error in |Vud|, although a recent determination of the nucleus-independent radiative corrections to superallowed nuclear β decays could reduce the |Vud|² uncertainty nearly to that of |Vus|². Alternative unitarity tests using only kaon decays, for which improvements in the theory and experimental inputs are likely in the next few years, reveal similar tensions and could be further improved by taking correlations between the theory inputs. As part of our analysis, we calculated the correction to f+Kπ(0) due to nonequilibrated topological charge at leading order in chiral perturbation theory, for both the full-QCD and the partially quenched cases. We also obtain the combination of low-energy constants in the chiral effective Lagrangian [C12r + C34r - (L5r)²] (Mρ) = (2.92 ± 0.31) × 10-6. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]