Lattice study of the vacuum polarization function and determination of the strong coupling constant

We calculate the vacuum polarization functions on the lattice using the overlap fermion formulation. By matching the lattice data at large momentum scales with the perturbative expansion supplemented by the operator product expansion (OPE), we extract the strong coupling constant alpha(s)(mu) in two-flavor QCD as Lambda((2))((MS)over bar)=0.234(9)((+16)(-0)) GeV, where the errors are statistical and systematic, respectively. In addition, from the analysis of the difference between the vector and axial-vector channels, we obtain some of the four-quark condensates.