Approaching the chiral point in two-flavour lattice simulations

Abstract: We investigate the behaviour of the pion decay constant and the pion mass in two-flavour lattice QCD, with the physical and chiral points as ultimate goal. Measurements come from the ensembles generated by the CLS initiative using the O(a)-improved Wilson formulation, with lattice spacing down to about 0.05 fermi and pion masses as low as 190 MeV. The applicability of SU(2) chiral perturbation theory is investigated, and various functional forms, and their range of validity, are compared. The physical scale is set through the kaon decay constant, whose measurement is enabled by inserting a third, heavier valence strange quark.