We present recent results from lattice simulations of 2+1 flavors of improved staggered fermions at zero baryon number density near the high temperature crossover. Included are new results from simulations of asqtad fermions at Nt = 12 and a nearly physical Goldstone pion mass and from simulations of HISQ fermions at Nt = 6 and 8. We focus on observables sensitive to chiral symmetry and confinement. A companion HotQCD talk discusses the effects of staggered-fermion taste-symmetry breaking on thermodynamic quantities.
We conclude our investigations on the QCD cross-over transition temperatures with 2+1 staggered flavours and one-link stout improvement. We extend our previous two studies [Phys. Lett. B643 (2006) 46, JHEP 0906:088 (2009)] by choosing even finer lattices (N_t=16) and we work again with physical quark masses. These new results [for details see JHEP 1009:073,2010] support our earlier findings. We compare them with the published results of the hotQCD collaboration. All these results are confronted with the predictions of the Hadron Resonance Gas model and Chiral Perturbation Theory for temperatur…
We present results from recent calculations of the QCD equation of state by the HotQCD Collaboration and review the implications for hydrodynamic modeling. The equation of state of QCD at zero baryon density was calculated on a lattice of dimensions $32^3 \times 8$ with $m_l = 0.1 m_s$ (corresponding to a pion mass of $\sim$220 MeV) using two improved staggered fermion actions, p4 and asqtad. C alculations were performed along lines of constant physics using more than 100M cpu-hours on BG/L supercomputers at LLNL, NYBlue, and SDSC. We present paramete rizations of the equation of state suitabl…
One of the fundamental properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), the equation of state, is a subject of extensive studies in lattice QCD and an essential requirement for the correct hydrodynamic modeling of heavy-ion collisions. Lattice QCD provides first-principle calculations for the physics in the non-perturbative regime. In this contribution, we report on recent progress by the HotQCD collaboration in studying the 2+1 flavor equation of state on lattices with the temporal extent N_tau=6, 8, 10 and 12 in Highly Improved Staggered Quarks (HISQ) discretization scheme. Comparisons with equat…
The behavior of bottomonium state correlators at non-zero temperature, $140.4 (β= 6.664) \le T \le 221 (β= 7.280)$ (MeV), where the transition temperature is $154(9)$ (MeV), is studied, using lattice NRQCD on $48^3 \times 12$ HotQCD HiSQ action configurations with light dynamical $N_f = 2 + 1$ ($m_{u,s}/m_s = 0.05$) staggered quarks. In order to understand finite temperature effects on quarkonium states, zero temperature behavior of bottomonium correlators is compared based on $32^4$ ($β= 6.664, 6.800$ and $6.950$) and $48^3 \times 64$ ($β= 7.280)$ lattices. We find that temperature effects on…
The present paper concludes our investigations on the QCD cross-over transition temperatures with 2+1 staggered flavours and one-link stout improvement. We extend our previous two studies [Phys. Lett. B643 (2006) 46, JHEP 0906:088 (2009)] by choosing even finer lattices ($N_t$=16) and we work again with physical quark masses. The new results on this broad cross-over are in complete agreement with our earlier ones. We compare our findings with the published results of the hotQCD collaboration. All these results are confronted with the predictions of the Hadron Resonance Gas model and Chiral Per…
Taste symmetry violations in staggered fermion formulations correlate strongly with the cut-off (lattice spacing) dependence in thermodynamic quantities. Better taste symmetry on the lattice can be achieved either by decreasing the lattice spacing and going to larger temporal extent in finite-temperature calculations, or by further improving the action. The highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action offers a further degree of improvement and substantially reduces taste violations. We report on our studies of the 2+1 flavor QCD thermodynamics with the HISQ/tree action. By systematically comp…
The present paper concludes our investigation on the QCD equation of state with 2+1 staggered flavors and one-link stout improvement. We extend our previous study [JHEP 0601:089 (2006)] by choosing even finer lattices. Lattices with $N_t=6,8$ and 10 are used, and the continuum limit is approached by checking the results at $N_t=12$. A Symanzik improved gauge and a stout-link improved staggered fermion action is utilized. We use physical quark masses, that is, for the lightest staggered pions and kaons we fix the $m_π/f_K$ and $m_K/f_K$ ratios to their experimental values. The pressure, the int…
The MILC collaboration has been performing realistic simulations of full QCD with 2+1 flavors of improved staggered quarks. Our simulations allow for controlled continuum and chiral extrapolations. I present results for the light pseudoscalar sector: masses and decay constants, quark masses and Gasser-Leutwyler low-energy constants. In addition I will present some results for heavy-light mesons, decay constants and semileptonic form factors, obtained in collaboration with the HPQCD and Fermilab lattice collaborations. Such calculations will help in the extraction of CKM matrix elements from ex…
We report on recent progress by the HotQCD collaboration in studying the trace anomaly at non-zero temperature in 2+1 flavor QCD on lattices with the temporal extent N_tau=4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 using the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action as well as the asqtad action. We discuss the dependence of our lattice results on the scale setting procedure and compare them with hadron resonance gas (HRG) calculations as well as to resummed perturbative results.
We present here continuum extrapolated results for all 2nd order cumulants using the most recent results obtained by the HotQCD collaboration in (2+1)-flavor QCD. We constrain the applicability of various HRG models by presenting a detailed comparison of our results based on different sets of hadron spectra as well as with virial expansion based model calculations. A comparison with our lattice QCD results for 2nd order cumulants with models that parametrize repulsive interactions among baryons and anti-baryons in a hadron resonance gas through a single excluded volume parameter (EVHRG) is als…
I give a brief introduction to the goals, challenges, and technical difficulties of lattice QCD thermodynamics and present some recent results from the HotQCD collaboration for the crossover temperature, equation of state, and other observables.
We conclude our investigation on the QCD equation of state (EoS) with 2+1 staggered flavors and one-link stout improvement. We extend our previous study [JHEP 0601:089 (2006)] by choosing even finer lattices. These new results [for details see arXiv:1007.2580] support our earlier findings. Lattices with N_t=6,8 and 10 are used, and the continuum limit is approached by checking the results at N_t=12. A Symanzik improved gauge and a stout-link improved staggered fermion action is taken; the light and strange quark masses are set to their physical values. Various observables are calculated in the…
We discuss the universal critical behavior in (2+1)-flavor QCD by analyzing lattice data from improved staggered fermions generated by the HotQCD Collaboration. We present recent results from two different lattice discretizations and various lattice spacings ($N_τ=6,8,12$) at fixed physical strange quark mass ($m_s$) but varying light quark mass ($m_l$). We find that the chiral order-parameter, i.e. the chiral condensate, shows the expected universal scaling that is associated with the critical point in the chiral limit already for light quark masses $m_l/m_s \lsim 0.05$. From an analysis of t…
We calculate the fermion self-energy at O(alpha_s) for the Symanzik improved staggered fermion action used in recent lattice simulations by the MILC collaboration. We demonstrate that the algebraic approach to lattice perturbation theory, suggested by us recently, is a powerful tool also for improved lattice actions.
I describe a calculation of B meson mixing at one-loop in staggered chiral perturbation theory, for the complete set of Standard Model and beyond-the-Standard Model operators. The particular lattice representation of the continuum operators used by the Fermilab Lattice/MILC collaborations (and earlier by the HPQCD collaboration) turns out to be important, and results in the presence of "wrong-spin" operators, whose contributions however vanish in the continuum limit. The relation between staggered and naive fermions also plays a key role.
I calculate, at one loop in staggered chiral perturbation theory, the matrix elements of the complete set of five local operators that may contribute to B mixing both in the Standard Model and in beyond-the-Standard-Model theories. Lattice computations of these matrix elements by the Fermilab Lattice/MILC collaborations (and earlier by the HPQCD collaboration) convert a light staggered quark into a naive quark, and construct the relevant 4-quark operators as local products of two local bilinears, each involving the naive light quark and the heavy quark. This particular representation of the op…
We present the final results from a multi-year study of the in-medium spectral properties of heavy quarkonium bound states on the lattice. In this work we combine high statistics $N_f=2+1$ ensembles from the HotQCD collaboration with the effective theory NRQCD and improved Bayesian spectral reconstruction methods. We corroborate with high precision the hierarchical in-medium modification of quarkonium states with respect to their vacuum binding energy and provide updated values on melting temperatures. In particular we are able to understand previous disagreements between different Bayesian me…
This review gives a critical assessment of the current state of lattice simulations of QCD thermodynamics and what it teaches us about hot hadronic matter. It outlines briefly lattice methods for studying QCD at nonzero temperature and zero baryon number density with particular emphasis on assessing and reducing cutoff effects. It discusses a variety of difficulties with methods for determining the transition temperature. It uses results reported recently in the literature and at this conference for illustration, especially those from a major study carried out by the HotQCD collaboration.
Results for the equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD at zero net baryon density using the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action by the HotQCD collaboration are presented. The strange quark mass was tuned to its physical value and the light (up/down) quark masses fixed to $m_l = 0.05m_s$ corresponding to a pion mass of 160 MeV in the continuum limit. Lattices with temporal extent $N_t=6$, 8, 10 and 12 were used. Since the cutoff effects for $N_t>6$ were observed to be small, reliable continuum extrapolations of the lattice data for the phenomenologically interesting temperatures range $1…
We present our first results on a direct computation of the complex in-medium heavy quark potential from realistic lattice QCD simulations. Ensembles with $N_τ=12$ from the HotQCD and TUMQCD collaboration offer unprecedented high statistics, those with $N_τ=16$ unprecedented time resolution, making possible a robust extraction of the real part from the spectral functions of Wilson line correlators. To this end we deploy a combination of a Bayesian reconstruction (BR method), as well as a Padé-like approximation. We corroborate findings made on less realistic lattices that ${\rm Re}[V]$ smoothl…
We consider the $(2+1)$ flavor Polyakov Quark Meson Model and study the effect of including fermion vacuum fluctuations on the thermodynamics and phase diagram. The resulting model predictions are compared to the recent QCD lattice simulations by the HotQCD and Wuppertal-Budapest collaborations. The variation of the thermodynamic quantities across the phase transition region becomes smoother. This results in better agreement with the lattice data. Depending on the value of the mass of the sigma meson, including the vacuum term results in either pushing the critical end point into higher values…
We calculate the Polyakov loop susceptibilities in the SU(3) lattice gauge theory using the Symanzik improved gauge action on different-sized lattices. The longitudinal and transverse fluctu- ations of the Polyakov loop, as well as, that of its absolute value are considered. We analyze their properties in relation to the confinement-deconfinement phase transition. We also present results based on simulations of (2+1)-flavor QCD on 32^3 x 8 lattice using Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action by the HotQCD collaboration. The influences of fermions on the Polyakov loop fluctuations are di…
We present our most recent investigations on the QCD cross-over transition temperatures with 2+1 staggered flavours and one-link stout improvement [JHEP 1009:073, 2010]. We extend our previous two studies [Phys. Lett. B643 (2006) 46, JHEP 0906:088 (2009)] by choosing even finer lattices ($N_t$=16) and we work again with physical quark masses. All these results are confronted with the predictions of the Hadron Resonance Gas model and Chiral Perturbation Theory for temperatures below the transition region. Our results can be reproduced by using the physical spectrum in these analytic calculation…
We present results for one-loop perturbative matching factors using bilinear operators composed of improved staggered fermions, using unimproved (Wilson) and improved (Symanzik, Iwasaki, and DBW2) gluon actions. We consider two fermions actions---HYP/$\bar{\text{Fat7}}$-smeared and "asqtad". The former is being used in calculations of electroweak matrix elements, while the latter have been used extensively by the MILC collaboration. We observe that using the improved gluon action leads to small reductions in the perturbative corrections, but that these reductions are smaller than those obtaine…
We present an update of the Fermilab Lattice and MILC Collaborations project to compute the form factors for semileptonic $B_{(s)}$-meson decays. Our calculation uses the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action for sea and valence quarks, and ensembles with up, down, strange, and charm quarks in the sea. Using a highly improved action with the MILC Collaboration's gauge ensembles with lattice spacings down to $a\approx0.03$ fm, allows the heavy valence quarks to be treated with the same discretization as the light and strange quarks. This unified treatment of the valence quarks allows fo…
The Polyakov-quark-meson (PQM) model, which combines chiral as well as deconfinement aspects of strongly interacting matter is introduced for three light quark flavors. An analysis of the chiral and deconfinement phase transition of the model and its thermodynamics at finite temperatures is given. Three different forms of the effective Polyakov loop potential are considered. The findings of the (2+1)-flavor model investigations are confronted to corresponding recent QCD lattice simulations of the RBC-Bielefeld, HotQCD and Wuppertal-Budapest collaborations. The influence of the heavier quark ma…
Based on ongoing simulations, we update our results for low energy constants, decay constants, and light quark masses. The simulations employ three dynamical flavors of improved staggered quarks.
The cost of dynamical quark simulations with improved staggered quarks is estimated based on current and planned running by the MILC collaboration. I find that a few 10s of Teraflop years should be sufficient to calculate down to a lattice spacing of 0.045 fm.
We present a calculation of the kaon $B$-parameter, $B_K$, using lattice QCD. We use improved staggered valence and sea fermions, the latter generated by the MILC collaboration with $N_f=2+1$ light flavors. To control discretization errors, we use four different lattice spacings ranging down to $a\approx 0.045\;$fm. The chiral and continuum extrapolations are done using SU(2) staggered chiral perturbation theory. Our final result is $\hat{B}_K = 0.727 \pm 0.004 (\text{stat}) \pm 0.038 (\text{sys})$, where the dominant systematic error is from our use of truncated (one-loop) matching factors.
We present results for the matrix elements of the additional $ΔS=2$ operators that appear in models of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM), expressed in terms of four BSM $B$-parameters. Combined with experimental results for $ΔM_K$ and $ε_K$, these constrain the parameters of BSM models. We use improved staggered fermions, with valence HYP-smeared quarks and $N_f=2+1$ flavors of "asqtad" sea quarks. The configurations have been generated by the MILC collaboration. The matching between lattice and continuum four-fermion operators and bilinears is done perturbatively at one-loop order. We u…
We present results for $B_{(s)}$- and $D_{(s)}$-meson semileptonic decays from ongoing calculations by the Fermilab Lattice and MILC Collaborations. Our calculation employs the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action for both sea and valence quarks and includes several ensembles with physical-mass up, down, strange, and charm quarks and lattice spacings ranging from $a\approx0.15$ fm down to 0.06 fm. At most lattice spacings, an ensemble with physical-mass light quarks is included. The use of the highly improved action, combined with the MILC Collaboration's gauge ensembles with lattice …
In HISQ simulations by the MILC and Fermilab Lattice collaborations, both the light quarks and the charm quark are staggered. We extend staggered chiral perturbation theory (\schpt) to include such all-staggered heavy-light mesons. We assume that the heavy quark action is sufficiently improved that we may take $a m_Q <<1$ (where $m_Q$ is the heavy quark mass), but also that $m_Q>>Λ_{QCD}$ so that a continuum heavy quark expansion is appropriate. Using this \schpt, the leptonic decay constant of the heavy-light meson is calculated at next-to-leading-order. The pattern of taste splittings in the…
We measure the pion mass and decay constant on ensembles generated by the Wuppertal-Budapest Collaboration, and extract the NLO low-energy constants l_3 and l_4 of SU(2) chiral perturbation theory. The data are generated in 2+1 flavor simulations with Symanzik glue and 2-fold stout-smeared staggered fermions, with pion masses varying from 135 MeV to 400 MeV, lattice scales between 0.7 GeV and 2.0 GeV, and m_s kept at its physical value. Furthermore, by excluding the lightest mass points, we are able to test the reliability of SU(2) chPT as a tool to extrapolate towards the physical point from …
By fitting pion masses and decay constants from 2+1 flavor staggered lattice simulations to the predictions of NLO and NNLO SU(2) chiral perturbation theory we determine the low-energy constants l_3 and l_4. The lattice ensembles were generated by the Wuppertal-Budapest collaboration and cover pion masses in the range of 135 to 435 MeV and lattice scales between 0.7 and 2.0 GeV. By choosing a suitable scaling trajectory, we were able to demonstrate that precise and stable results for the LECs can be obtained from continuum ChPT to NLO. The pion masses available in this work also allow us to st…
We present an update on the MILC Collaboration's light hadron spectrum calculation with two flavors of dynamical, staggered quarks. We present extrapolations of the nucleon to rho mass ratio to the continuum limit for fixed values of the pi to rho mass ratio including the physical one.
We present results for matching factors for bilinear operators composed of HYP-smeared staggered fermions and constructed using HYP-smeared fat links. The matching factors are calculated perturbatively at one-loop order. The new feature of our calculation compared to previous work on HYP-smeared staggered fermions is the use of the Symanzik-improved gluon propagator, which allows our results to be applied to our ongoing simulations based on configurations generated by the MILC collaboration. We address the issue of the relative efficiency of various improvement schemes in reducing one-loop cor…
In highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) simulations by the HPQCD, MILC, and Fermilab Lattice collaborations, both the light quarks and the charm quark are staggered. We extend chiral perturbation theory for staggered quarks to include such all-staggered heavy-light mesons. We assume that the heavy quark action is sufficiently improved that we may take $a m_Q <<1$ (where $m_Q$ is the heavy quark mass), but also that $m_Q>>Λ_{QCD}$ so that a continuum heavy quark expansion is appropriate. We develop this effective chiral theory through next-to-leading order, and use it to study the pattern of …
The MILC collaboration's simulations with improved staggered quarks are being extended with runs at a lattice spacing of 0.06 fm with quark masses down to one tenth the strange quark mass. We give a brief introduction to these new simulations and the determination of the lattice spacing. Then we combine these new runs with older results to study the masses of the nucleon and the Omega minus in the continuum and chiral limits.
As a consistency check of the staggered-fermion fourth-root approximation, we analyze the a_0 and f_0 correlators, including the effects of two-meson taste-multiplet intermediate states. Rooted staggered chiral perturbation theory describes the contributions from the pseudoscalar taste multiplets in terms of only a few low energy constants, which have all been previously determined by the MILC collaboration. In previous work one of us (Prelovsek) showed that the two-meson ``bubble'' contributions could explain the observed anomalies in the lattice data for the isovector a_0 channel. In the pre…
We present our recent studies of the pseudo-critical temperature, $T_c$, of QCD using domain wall fermions. Domain wall fermions have the advantage that they preserve exact SU(2) chiral symmetry at finite lattice spacing in the limit that $L_s \to \infty$. The RBC Collaboration has performed a set of dynamical calculations at $L_s = 32$ and $N_t = 8$ using the Iwasaki gauge action with two light quarks ($m_l a = 0.003$) and one strange quark ($m_s a = 0.037$). A clear signal for the crossover transition can be seen in the light chiral susceptibility, as well as in the Wilson line. However, at …
We present the finite temperature spectra of both bottomonium and charmonium, obtained from a consistent lattice QCD based potential picture. Starting point is the complex in-medium potential extracted on full QCD lattices with dynamical u,d and s quarks, generated by the HotQCD collaboration. Using the generalized Gauss law approach, vetted in a previous study on quenched QCD, we fit ${\rm Re}[V]$ with a single temperature dependent parameter $m_D$, the Debye screening mass, and confirm the up to now tentative values of ${\rm Im}[V]$. The obtained analytic expression for the complex potential…
We introduce a new class of actions for staggered quarks in lattice QCD which significantly reduce flavour symmetry violations in the pion mass spectrum. An action introduced by the MILC collaboration for the same purpose is seen to be a special case. We discus how such actions arise from a systematic attempt to reduce flavour symmetry violations in the weak coupling limit. It is shown that for quenched lattice QCD at 6/g^2=5.7, representative actions of this class give a considerable reduction in flavour symmetry violation over the standard staggered action, and a significant reduction over w…
We use the dynamical gluon configurations provided by the MILC collaboration in a study of the charmonium spectrum and psi leptonic width. We examine sea quark effects on mass splitting and on the leptonic decay matrix element for light masses as low as m_s/5, while keeping the strange quark mass fixed and the lattice spacing nearly constant.
We present updated results for the light-quark connected part of the leading hadronic contribution to the muon $g-2$ from configurations with 2+1+1 flavors of HISQ quarks using the time-momentum representation of the electromagnetic current correlator. We have added statistics on two ensembles as well as a fourth lattice spacing using configurations that have been generated by the MILC collaboration at the physical pion mass. Additionally we account for the leading finite-volume and taste-breaking effects using Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory at NNLO.
We present results for the spectrum and decay constants of B mesons from NRQCD using dynamical configurations at $β=5.6$ with two flavours of staggered fermions. The light quarks are generated using the Clover action with tadpole improvement.
We present the results for $B_K$ calculated using HYP-smeared staggered fermions using lattices generated by the MILC collaboration using the asqtad staggered action. We have done the calculation on 8 ensembles of these lattices, including three different lattice spacings ($a=0.12, 0.09, 0.06$ fm). We fit the data to forms based on those predicted by SU(3) mixed-action partially-quenched staggered chiral perturbation theory. Our preliminary result is $ B_K(\text{NDR},μ=2\text{GeV}) = 0.528 \pm 0.011 \pm 0.048 $, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic. The error turns ou…
We extract the next-to-leading-order low-energy constants \bar\ell_3 and \bar\ell_4 of SU(2) chiral perturbation theory, based on precise lattice data for the pion mass and decay constant on ensembles generated by the Wuppertal-Budapest Collaboration for QCD thermodynamics. These ensembles feature 2+1 flavors of two-fold stout-smeared dynamical staggered fermions combined with Symanzik glue, with pion masses varying from 135 to 435 MeV, lattice scales between 0.7 and 2.0 GeV, while m_s is kept fixed at its physical value. Moderate taste splittings and the scale being set through the pion decay…
We investigate a class of actions for lattice QCD with staggered quarks aimed at reducing the flavour symmetry violations associated with using staggered fermions. These actions replace the gauge field link fields in the quark action with covariantly smeared fields. As such they are an extension of actions considered by the MILC collaboration. We show that such actions systematically reduce flavour symmetry violations in the weak coupling limit. Using the mass splitting between Goldstone and non-Goldstone pions as a measure of flavour symmetry violations we find that these actions have conside…
We present preliminary results for the D_s meson spectrum and decay constants in unquenched lattice QCD. Simulations are carried out with 2+1 dynamical quarks using gauge configurations generated by the MILC collaboration. We use the ``asqtad'' a^2 improved staggered action for the light quarks, and the clover heavy quark action with the Fermilab interpretation. We compare our spectrum results with the newly discovered 0+ and 1+ states in the D_s system.
The Fermilab Lattice and MILC collaborations have shown in one-loop lattice QCD perturbation theory that the renormalization constants of vector and axial-vector mixed clover-asqtad currents are closely related to the product of those for clover-clover and asqtad-asqtad (local) vector currents. To be useful for future higher precision calculations this relationship must be valid beyond one-loop and very general. We test its validity nonperturbatively using clover and Highly Improved Staggered (HISQ) strange quarks, utilising the absolute normalization of the HISQ temporal axial current. We fin…
We present results of an exploratory study of singlet scalar states in unquenched QCD using both glueball and meson operators. Results for non-singlet non-strange scalar mesons are also presented. We use Asqtad improved staggered fermions and gauge configurations generated by the MILC collaboration at lattice spacings of .12 and .09 fm. In this formulation, the glueball mass is not significantly different from the quenched value at finite lattice spacing. Significant taste violations are present in the scalar sector. At light quark masses, decay channels complicate the mass determinations. The…
This work continues our program of lattice-QCD baryon physics using staggered fermions for both the sea and valence quarks. We present a proof-of-concept study that demonstrates, for the first time, how to calculate baryon matrix elements using staggered quarks for the valence sector. We show how to relate the representations of the continuum staggered flavor-taste group $\text{SU}(8)_{FT}$ to those of the discrete lattice symmetry group. The resulting calculations yield the normalization factors relating staggered baryon matrix elements to their physical counterparts. We verify this methodolo…
We present results from an ongoing lattice study of the lowest lying charmonium and bottomonium level splittings using the Fermilab heavy quark formalism. Our objective is to test the performance of this action on MILC-collaboration ensembles of (2+1) flavors of light improved staggered (asqtad) quarks. Measurements are done on 16 ensembles with degenerate up and down quarks of various masses, thus permitting a chiral extrapolation, and over lattice spacings ranging from 0.09 fm to 0.18 fm, thus permitting study of lattice-spacing dependence. We examine combinations of the mass splittings that…
The propagator of the domain wall fermion is calculated from the gauge configurations of the RBC-UKQCD collaborations with 2+1 dynamical flavors of $16^3\times 32\times 16$ lattice. The ambiguity of the phase is adjusted such that the overlap of the solution of the conjugate gradient method and the plane wave at the source becomes real. The mass function becomes close to those of Kogut-Susskind fermion, but no anomalous behavior for $u/d$-quark mass and s-quark mass ratio close to 0.75 appears.
I give a status report on the validity of the so-called ``fourth-root trick'', i.e. the procedure of representing the determinant for a single fermion by the fourth root of the staggered fermion determinant. This has been used by the MILC collaboration to create a large ensemble of lattices using which many quantities of physical interest have been and are being calculated. It is also used extensively in studies of QCD thermodynamics. The main question is whether the theory so defined has the correct continuum limit. There has been significant recent progress towards answering this question. A…
Dramatic progress has been made over the last decade in the numerical study of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) through the use of improved formulations of QCD on the lattice (improved actions), the development of new algorithms and the rapid increase in computing power available to lattice gauge theorists. In this article we describe simulations of full QCD using the improved staggered quark formalism, ``asqtad'' fermions. These simulations were carried out with two degenerate flavors of light quarks (up and down) and with one heavier flavor, the strange quark. Several light quark masses, down to…
