In this work we perform the parameter tuning of three flavors of dynamical clover quarks on anisotropic lattices. The fermion action uses three-dimensional spatial stout-link smearing. The gauge anisotropy is determined in a small box with Schrödinger background using Wilson-loop ratios. The fermion anisotropy is obtained from studying the meson dispersion relation with antiperiodic boundary conditions in the time direction. The spatial and temporal clover coefficients are fixed to the tree-level tadpole-improved values, and we demonstrate that they satisfy the nonperturbative conditions as determined by the Schrödinger functional method. For the desired lattice spacing $a_s\approx 0.12$ fm and renormalized anisotropy $ξ=3.5$, we find the gauge and fermionic anisotropies can be fixed to quark mass independent values up through the strange quark mass. This work lays the foundation needed for further studies of the excited-state hadron spectrum.
A new over-improved stout-link smearing algorithm, designed to stabilise instanton-like objects, is presented. A method for quantifying the selection of the over-improvement parameter, $ε$, is demonstrated. The new smearing algorithm is compared with the original stout-link smearing, and Symanzik improved smearing through calculations of the topological charge and visualisations of the topological charge density.
We discuss a 3-flavour lattice QCD action with clover improvement in which the fermion matrix has single level stout smearing for the hopping terms together with unsmeared links for the clover term. With the (tree-level) Symanzik improved gluon action this constitutes the Stout Link Non-perturbative Clover or SLiNC action. To cancel O(a) terms the clover term coefficient has to be tuned. We present here results of a non-perturbative determination of this coefficient using the Schroedinger functional and as a by-product a determination of the critical hopping parameter. Comparisons of the resul…
The impact of stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions is examined through the consideration of the mass and renormalization functions of the overlap quark propagator over a variety of smeared configurations. Up to six sweeps of stout-link smearing are investigated. For heavy quark masses, the quark propagator is strongly affected by the smearing procedure. For moderate masses, the effect appears to be negligible. A small effect is seen for light quark masses, where dynamical mass generation is suppressed through the smearing procedure.
Center vortices are studied in SU(3) gauge theory using Maximal Center Gauge (MCG) fixing. Stout link smearing and over-improved stout link smearing are used to construct a preconditioning gauge field transformation, applied to the original gauge field before fixing to MCG. We find that preconditioning successfully achieves higher gauge fixing maxima. We observe a reduction in the number of identified vortices when preconditioning is used, and also a reduction in the vortex-only string tension.
The effect of Stout smearing is investigated in numerical simulations with twisted mass Wilson quarks. The phase transition near zero quark mass is studied on 12^3x24, 16^3x32 and 24^3x48 lattices at lattice spacings a = 0.1 - 0.125 fm.
The properties of the momentum space quark propagator in Landau gauge are studied for the overlap quark action in quenched lattice QCD. Numerical calculations are performed over four ensembles of gauge configurations, where three are smeared using either 1, 3, or 6 sweeps of stout-link smearing. We calculate the non-perturbative wave function renormalization function $Z(p)$ and the non-perturbative mass function $M(p)$ for a variety of bare quark masses. We find that the wave-function renormalization function is slightly sensitive to the number of stout-link smearing sweeps. For the mass funct…
For the Stout Link Non-perturbative Clover (SLiNC) action we determine in one-loop lattice perturbation theory the critical hopping parameter $κ_c$ and the clover parameter $c_{SW}$ which is needed for $\mathcal{O}(a)$ improvement. Performing this calculation off-shell we are also able to compute the non gauge invariant quark field improvement coefficient $c_{NGI}$. Additionally, we present first results for the renormalization factors of the scalar, pseudoscalar, vector and axial vector currents. We discuss mean field improvement for the SLiNC action.
Using plaquette and Symanzik improved gauge action and stout link clover fermions we determine the improvement coefficient $c_{SW}$ in one-loop lattice perturbation theory from the off-shell quark-quark-gluon three-point function. In addition, we compute the coefficients needed for the most general form of quark field improvement and present the one-loop result for the critical hopping parameter $κ_c$. We discuss mean field improvement for $c_{SW}$ and $κ_c$ and the choice of the mean field coupling for the actions we have considered.
We discuss an action in which the fermion matrix has single level stout smearing for the hopping terms together with unsmeared links for the clover term. With the (tree level) Symanzik improved gluon action this constitutes the Stout Link Non-perturbative Clover or SLiNC action. To cancel O(a) terms the clover coefficient, csw, has to be tuned. We present here preliminary results of a non-perturbative determination of csw using the Schrodinger functional and as a by-product also a determination of the critical hopping parameter. A determination of the renormalisation constant for the local vec…
We determine the improvement factor $c_{SW}$ in one-loop lattice perturbation theory for the plaquette and Symanzik improved gauge actions. The fermionic action is ${\mathcal{O}(a)}$ clover improved with one-time stout smearing. $c_{SW}$ is derived from the one-loop correction to the quark-quark-gluon vertex in the off-shell regime. We give a first numerical value for the one-loop contribution to the non gauge-invariant improvement coefficient $c_{NGI}$ for the quark field using the plaquette action. A discussion of mean field improvement is included.
A detailed comparison is made between the topological structure of quenched QCD as revealed by the recently proposed over-improved stout-link smearing in conjunction with an improved gluonic definition of the topological density on one hand and a similar analysis made possible by the overlap-fermionic topological charge density both with and without variable ultraviolet cutoff $λ_{cut}$. The matching is twofold, provided by fitting the density-density two-point functions on one hand and by a point-by-point fitting of the topological densities according to the two methods. We point out the simi…
The effects of Gaussian quark-field smearing and analytic stout-link smearing on the correlations of gauge-invariant extended baryon operators are studied. Gaussian quark-field smearing substantially reduces contributions from the short wavelength modes of the theory, while stout-link smearing significantly reduces the noise from the stochastic evaluations. The use of gauge-link smearing is shown to be crucial for baryon operators constructed of covariantly-displaced quark fields. Preferred smearing parameters are determined for a lattice spacing a_s ~ 0.1 fm.
We report on the results of a numerical simulation concerning the low-lying spectrum of four-dimensional N=1 SU(2) Supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theory on the lattice with light dynamical gluinos. In the gauge sector the tree-level Symanzik improved gauge action is used, while we use the Wilson formulation in the fermion sector with stout smearing of the gauge links in the Wilson-Dirac operator. The ensembles of gauge configurations were produced with the Two-Step Polynomial Hybrid Monte Carlo (TS-PHMC) updating algorithm. We performed simulations on large lattices up to a size of 24^3 x 48 …
Smearing of gauge-field configurations in lattice field theory improves the results of lattice simulations by suppressing high energy modes from correlation functions. In quantum simulations, high kinetic energy eigenstates are introduced when the time evolution operator is approximated such as Trotterization. While improved Trotter product formulae exist to reduce the errors, they have diminishing accuracy returns with respect to resource costs. Therefore having an algorithm that has fewer resources than an improved Trotter formula is desirable. In this work I develop a representation agnosti…
We calculate lattice renormalisation constants of local and one-link quark operators for overlap fermions and improved gauge actions in one-loop perturbation theory. For the local operators we stout smear the SU(3) links in the fermionic action. Using the popular tadpole improved Lüscher-Weisz actions at $β=8.45$ and $β=8.0$ we present numerical values for the Z factors in the $\bar{MS}$ scheme (partly as function of the stout smearing strength). We compare various levels of mean field (tadpole) improvement which have been applied to our results.
We present the quark mass and axial current renormalization factors for the RG-improved Iwasaki gauge action and three flavors of the stout smeared $O(a)$-improved Wilson quark action. We employ $α=0.1$ and $n_{\mathrm{step}}=6$ for the stout link smearing parameters and all links in the quark action are replaced with the smeared links. Using the Schrödinger functional scheme we evaluate the renormalization factors at $β=1.82$ where large scale simulations are being carried out.
The phase diagram and the location of the critical endpoint (CEP) of lattice QCD with unimproved staggered fermions on a $N_t=4$ lattice was determined fifteen years ago with the multiparameter reweighting method by studying Fisher zeros. We first reproduce the old result with an exact algorithm (not known at the time) and with statistics larger by an order of magnitude. As an extension of the old analysis we introduce stout smearing in the fermion action in order to reduce the finite lattice spacing effects. First we show that increasing the smearing parameter $ρ$ the crossover at $μ= 0$ gets…
We investigate the mechanism of smearing in the APE, Stout, HYP and HEX schemes through their effect on glue and quark Fourier modes. Using this, we non-perturbatively tune the smearing parameters to their optimum values. Smearing causes a super-linear improvement in taste symmetry breaking in the high temperature phase of QCD. We use optimal smearing in the high temperature phase and find close agreement of meson screening masses with weak coupling predictions.
The effect of using smeared sink operators on the hadron spectrum is studied for quenched twisted mass lattice QCD with up, down, and strange quarks. Gaussian smearing is used for quark fields, and stout link smearing for gauge fields. Smeared correlators are found to be dominated by the ground state with a small contribution from excited states, leading to an improved determination of some ground state masses.
We study non-perturbative improvement in SU(3) lattice gauge theory coupled to fermions in the fundamental and two-index symmetric representations. Our lattice action is defined with hypercubic smeared links incorporated into the Wilson-clover fermion kernel. Using standard Schroedinger-functional techniques we estimate the clover coefficient Csw and find that discretization errors are much smaller than in thin-link theories.
We performed a rough estimate of the non-perturbative value of the clover term coefficient cSW for the APE stout link Wilson fermion. We varied the number of smearings from Nsmear=1 to 6 and adopted beta values roughly corresponding to the lattice spacing of 0.1 fm. We used the Schroedinger functional technique for an evaluation of cSW and found that cSW decreases monotonically as we increase Nsmear but has a 10% order of deviation from the tree level value for Nsmear=6.
In this paper, we show a comparison of different definitions of the topological charge on the lattice. We concentrate on one small-volume ensemble with 2 flavours of dynamical, maximally twisted mass fermions and use three more ensembles to analyze the approach to the continuum limit. We investigate several fermionic and gluonic definitions. The former include the index of the overlap Dirac operator, the spectral flow of the Wilson--Dirac operator and the spectral projectors. For the latter, we take into account different discretizations of the topological charge operator and various smoothing…
In this work, we perform parameter tuning with dynamical anisotropic clover lattices using the Schrödinger functional and stout-smearing in the fermion field. We find that $ξ_R/ξ_0$ is relatively close to 1 in our parameter search, which allows us to fix $ξ_0$ in our runs. We proposed to determine the gauge and fermion anisotropy in a Schrödinger-background small box using Wilson loop ratios and PCAC masses. We demonstrate that these ideas are equivalent to but more efficient than the conventional meson dispersion approach. The spatial and temporal clover coefficients are fixed to the tree-lev…
We present a framework for phenomenological lattice QCD calculations which makes use of a tree level Symanzink improved action for gluons and stout-link Wilson fermions. We give details of our efficient HMC/RHMC algorithm and present a scaling study of the low-lying N_f=3 baryon spectrum. We find a scaling region that extends to a~<0.16fm and conclude that our action and algorithm are suitable for large scale phenomenological investigations of N_f=2+1 QCD. We expect this conclusion to hold for other comparable actions.
We present a calculation of the leptonic decay-constant ratio $f_K/f_π$ in 2+1 flavor QCD. Our data set includes five lattice spacings and pion masses reaching down below the physical one. Special emphasis is placed on a careful study of all systematic uncertainties, especially the continuum extrapolation. Our result is perfectly compatible with the first-row unitarity constraint of the Standard Model.
In this paper we present the perturbative computation of the renormalization functions for the quark field and for a complete set of ultra-local fermion bilinears. The computation of the relevant Green's functions was carried out at 1-loop level for the staggered action using massive fermions. The gluon links which appear both in the fermion action and in the definition of the bilinears have been improved by applying a stout smearing procedure up to 2 times, iteratively. In the gluon sector we employed the Symanzik improved gauge action for different sets of values of the Symanzik coefficients…
We investigate a variant of hypercubic gauge link smearing where the SU(3) projection is replaced with a normalization to the corresponding unitary group. This smearing is differentiable and thus suitable for use in dynamical fermion simulations using molecular dynamics type algorithms. We show that this smearing is as efficient as projected hypercubic smearing in removing ultraviolet noise from the gauge fields. We test the normalized hypercubic smearing in dynamical improved (clover) Wilson and valence overlap simulations.
A Lie-algebra based recipe for smoothing gauge links in lattice field theory is presented, building on the matrix logarithm. With or without hypercubic nesting, this LOG/HYL smearing yields fat links which are differentiable w.r.t. the original ones. This is essential for defining UV-filtered ("fat link") fermion actions which may be simulated with a HMC-type algorithm. The effect of this smearing on the distribution of plaquettes and on the residual mass of tree-level O(a)-improved clover fermions in quenched QCD is studied.
We calculate the fermion propagator and the quark-antiquark Green's functions for a complete set of ultralocal fermion bilinears, ${{\cal O}_Γ}$ [$Γ$: scalar (S), pseudoscalar (P), vector (V), axial (A) and tensor (T)], using perturbation theory up to one-loop and to lowest order in the lattice spacing. We employ the staggered action for fermions and the Symanzik Improved action for gluons. From our calculations we determine the renormalization functions for the quark field and for all ultralocal taste-singlet bilinear operators. The novel aspect of our calculations is that the gluon links whi…
We study mesons on the lattice with a special focus on excited states. For that purpose we construct several quark sources with different spatial smearings, including p-waves. These quark sources are then combined with the appropiate Dirac structures to form meson interpolators of definite spin. We use these operators to construct a cross correlation matrix from which we extract ground and excited meson states using the variational method. For the calculations we use gauge configurations with $N_f=2$ dynamical Clover Wilson fermions provided by the CP-PACS collaboration. We show preliminary re…
Normalized hypercubic smearing improves the behavior of dynamical Wilson-clover fermions, but has the unwanted side effect that it can occasionally produce spikes in the fermion force. These spikes originate in the chain rule connecting the derivative with respect to the smeared links to the derivative with respect to the dynamical links, and are associated with the presence of dislocations in the dynamical gauge field. We propose and study an action designed to suppress these dislocations. We present evidence for improved performance of the hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm. A side benefit is impr…
We present results for excited meson spectra from $N_f=2$ clover-Wilson configurations provided by the CP-PACS Collaboration. In our study we investigate both low and high spin mesons. For spin-0 and spin-1 mesons, we are especially interested in the excited states. To access these states we construct several different interpolators from quark sources of different spatial smearings and calculate a matrix of correlators. For this matrix we then solve a generalized eigenvalue problem. For spin-2 and spin-3, we extract only the lowest lying states.
We have calculated continuum limit step scaling functions of bilinear and four-fermion operators renormalized in a Rome-Southampton scheme using various smearing prescriptions for the gauge field. Also, for the first time, we have calculated non-perturbative anomalous dimensions of operators renormalized in a Rome-Southampton scheme. The effect of such smearing first enters connected fermionic correlation functions via radiative corrections. We use off-shell renormalisation as a probe, and observe that the upper edge of the Rome-Southampton window is reduced by link smearing. This can be inter…
We use over-improved stout-link smearing to investigate the presence and nature of instantons on the lattice. We find that smearing can remove short-range effects with little damage to the long-range structure of the gauge field, and that after around 50 sweeps this process is complete. There are more significant risks for very high levels of smearing beyond 100 sweeps. We are thus able to produce gauge configurations dominated by instanton effects. We then calculate the overlap quark propagator on these configurations, and thus the non-perturbative mass function. We find that smeared configur…
In this paper we present the perturbative evaluation of the difference between the renormalization functions of flavor singlet and nonsinglet bilinear quark operators on the lattice. The computation is performed to two loops and to lowest order in the lattice spacing, for a class of improved lattice actions, including Wilson, tree-level (TL) Symanzik and Iwasaki gluons, twisted mass and SLiNC Wilson fermions, as well as staggered fermions with twice stout-smeared links. In the staggered formalism, the stout smearing procedure is also applied to the definition of bilinear operators.
We systematically compare filtering methods used to extract topological excitations from lattice gauge configurations. We show that there is a strong correlation of the topological charge densities obtained by APE and Stout smearing. Furthermore, a first quantitative analysis of quenched and dynamical configurations reveals a crucial difference of their topological structure: the topological charge density is more fragmented, when dynamical quarks are present. This fact also implies that smearing has to be handled with great care, not to destroy these characteristic structures.
The hadron mass spectrum is calculated in lattice QCD using a novel fat-link clover fermion action in which only the irrelevant operators of the fermion action are constructed using smeared links. The simulations are performed on a 16^3 X 32 lattice with a lattice spacing of a=0.125 fm. We compare actions with n=4 and 12 smearing sweeps with a smearing fraction of 0.7. The n=4 Fat Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) action provides scaling which is superior to mean-field improvement, and offers advantages over nonperturbative O(a) improvement.
We present results on the nucleon electromagnetic form factors from Lattice QCD at momentum transfer up to about $12$~GeV$^2$. We analyze two gauge ensembles with the Wilson-clover fermion action, a lattice spacing of $a\approx 0.09$~fm and pion masses $m_π\approx 170$~MeV and $m_π\approx 280$~MeV. In our analysis we employ momentum smearing as well as a set of techniques to investigate excited state effects. Good agreement with experiment and phenomenology is found for the ratios $G_E/G_M$ and $F_2/F_1$, whereas discrepancies are observed for the individual form factors $F_1$ and $F_2$. We di…
The hadron mass spectrum is calculated in lattice QCD using a novel fat-link clover fermion action in which only the irrelevant operators in the fermion action are constructed using smeared links. The simulations are performed on a 16^3 x 32 lattice with a lattice spacing of a=0.125 fm. We compare actions with n=4 and 12 smearing sweeps with a smearing fraction of 0.7. The n=4 Fat-Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) action provides scaling which is superior to mean-field improvement, and offers advantages over nonperturbative 0(a) improvement, including a reduced exceptional configuration problem.
We present high-statistics estimates of the isovector charges of the nucleon from four 2+1-flavor ensembles generated using Wilson-clover fermions with stout smearing and tree-level tadpole improved Symanzik gauge action at lattice spacings $a=0.114$ and $0.080$ fm and with $M_π\approx 315$ and 200 MeV. The truncated solver method with bias correction and the coherent source sequential propagator construction are used to cost-effectively achieve $O(10^5)$ measurements on each ensemble. Using these data, the analysis of two-point correlation functions is extended to include four states in the f…
We quantitatively examine the extent to which instanton degress of freedom, contained within standard Monte-carlo generated gauge-field configurations, can maintain the characteristic features of the mass and renormalisation functions of the non-perturbative quark propagator. We use over-improved stout-link smearing to isolate instanton effects on the lattice. Using a variety of measures, we illustrate how gauge fields consisting almost solely of instanton-like objects are produced after only 50 sweeps of smearing. We find a full vacuum, with a packing fraction more than three times larger tha…
We discuss the tuning of the anisotropic clover action and Symanzik-improved gauge action in lattice perturbation theory. The fermion action is constructed from stout-smeared spatial links, which complicates the calculation considerably. In addition, the full quark-mass dependence of the action parameters is included in this study. We present results for the fermion and gauge aspect ratios for varying bare aspect ratios, quark masses and smearing parameters.
We compute the difference in the renormalization of flavor singlet and nonsinglet fermion bilinear operators, to two loops in perturbation theory. Our results are applicable to a rather wide class of lattice actions with Symanzik improved gluons, stout links and clover fermions, including the Twisted Mass and SLiNC actions. A more detailed presentation of our results, along with relevant references, will appear in a forthcoming publication.
We report about on-going simulations of $N_f=2+1$ lattice QCD. We use a tadpole improved Symanzik gauge action and stout link smeared Wilson fermions with a clover term. We employ the Hasenbusch trick for the degenerate u- and d-quarks, and the RHMC algorithm for the simulation of the strange quark.
The Fat Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) fermion action is a variant of the $O(a)$-improved Wilson action where the irrelevant operators are constructed using smeared links. While the use of such smearing allows for the use of highly improved definitions of the field strength tensor $F_{μν},$ we show that the standard 1-loop clover term with a mean field improved coefficient $c_{\rm sw}$ is sufficient to remove the $O(a)$ errors, avoiding the need for non-perturbative tuning. This result enables efficient dynamical simulations in QCD with the FLIC fermion action.
In this paper we present the perturbative computation of the difference between the renormalization factors of flavor singlet ($\sum_f\barψ_fΓψ_f$, $f$: flavor index) and nonsinglet ($\barψ_{f_1} Γψ_{f_2}, f_1 \neq f_2$) bilinear quark operators (where $Γ= \mathbb{1},\,γ_5,\,γ_μ,\,γ_5\,γ_μ,\, γ_5\,σ_{μ\,ν}$) on the lattice. The computation is performed to two loops and to lowest order in the lattice spacing, using Symanzik improved gluons and staggered fermions with twice stout-smeared links. The stout smearing procedure is also applied to the definition of bilinear operators. A significant pa…
Simulations for the thermodynamics of the 2+1 flavor QCD are performed employing chiral fermions. The use of Möbius domain-wall fermions with stout-link smearing is more effective on the finer lattices where all the relevant chiral symmetries are realized more accurately. We report on the initial simulations near the (pseudo) critical point using the line of constant physics with an average $ud$ quark mass slightly heavier than physical at $a\lesssim 0.1$ fm.
We simulate Quantum Chromodynamics in four Euclidean dimensions with two (degenerate mass) flavors of dynamical quarks. The Dirac operator is the so-called chirally improved operator that has been studied so far in quenched calculations. We now present results of an implementation with the Hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm including stout smearing. Our results are from an 8^3x16 lattice with tadpole improved Luescher-Weisz gauge action. We present our estimate of the lattice spacing, the pi and rho meson masses and evidence for tunneling between different topological sectors.
The leptonic decay-constant ratio $f_K/f_π$ is calculated from lattice-QCD simulations using $N_f=2+1$ dynamical fermion flavors in the clover-improved formulation and 2-HEX smearing. The simulations were performed for a range of mass-degenerate light quarks including the physical point and at various lattice couplings and volumes, allowing to quantify all relevant sources of systematic uncertainties for our final number of the decay-constant ratio. Utilizing input from chiral perturbation theory, we also quote the charged decay-constant ratio $f_{K^\pm}/f_{π^\pm}$. With further input from sup…
We present a measurement of the Schrödinger Functional running coupling in SU(2) lattice gauge theory with adjoint fermions. We use HEX smearing and clover improvement to reduce the discretization effects. We obtain a robust continuum limit for the step scaling, which confirms the existence of a non-trivial fixed point.
