Axial couplings and strong decay widths of heavy hadrons

We calculate the axial couplings of mesons and baryons containing a heavy quark in the static limit using lattice QCD. These couplings determine the leading interactions in heavy hadron chiral perturbation theory and are central quantities in heavy quark physics, as they control strong decay widths and the light quark mass dependence of heavy hadron observables. Our analysis makes use of lattice data at six different pion masses, 227 MeV