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 higher pion masses.
Chiral logarithms in $m_π^2$ are calculated at one loop, taking into account the leading contributions to flavor symmetry breaking due to staggered fermions. I treat both the full QCD case (2+1 light dynamical flavors) and the quenched case; finite volume corrections are included. My starting point is the effective chiral Lagrangian introduced by Lee and Sharpe. It is necessary to understand the one-loop diagrams in the ``quark flow'' picture in order to adjust the calculation to correspond to the desired number of dynamical quarks.
In confining lattice gauge theories in which part of the flavor group is coupled weakly to additional gauge fields, both the dynamics of the weak gauge fields as well as lattice artifacts may have non-trivial effects on the orientation of the vacuum in flavor space. Here we discuss this issue for lattice gauge theories employing staggered fermions. Staggered fermions break flavor symmetries to a much smaller group on the lattice, and orientations in flavor space that are equivalent in the continuum may be distinct on the lattice. Assuming universality, we show that in the continuum limit the w…
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 discuss chiral and deconfinement aspects of the finite temperature transition in QCD using improved staggered actions. We study different quantities related to chiral and deconfinement transition and discuss their cutoff dependence. Contrary to some earlier lattice results we find that the chiral and deconfinement transition are not closely interconnected.
We calculate the axial current decay constants of taste non-Goldstone pions and kaons in staggered chiral perturbation theory through next-to-leading order. The results are a simple generalization of the results for the taste Goldstone case. New low-energy couplings are limited to analytic corrections that vanish in the continuum limit; certain coefficients of the chiral logarithms are modified, but they contain no new couplings. We report results for quenched, fully dynamical, and partially quenched cases of interest in the chiral SU(3) and SU(2) theories.
Staggered fermions with smeared links can have greatly improved chiral properties. In a recent paper we introduced a simple and effective method to simulate four flavors of staggered smeared link fermions. In this work we extend the four flavor method to two flavors. We define the two flavor action by the square root of the four flavor fermionic determinant and show that by using a polynomial approximation the two flavor action can be evaluated with the necessary accuracy. We test this method by studying the finite temperature phase structure with hypercubic smeared (HYP) link staggered action…
We calculate the masses of taste non-Goldstone pions and kaons in staggered chiral perturbation theory through next-to-leading order in the standard power counting. The results can be used to quantitatively understand taste violations in existing lattice data generated with staggered fermions and to extract the $u$, $d$, and $s$ quark masses and Gasser-Leutwyler parameters from the experimentally observed spectrum. The expressions for the non-Goldstone masses contain low-energy couplings unique to the non-Goldstone sector. With two exceptions these enter as coefficients of analytic terms; all …
We incorporate heavy-light mesons into staggered chiral perturbation theory, working to leading order in 1/m_Q, where m_Q is the heavy quark mass. At first non-trivial order in the chiral expansion, staggered taste violations affect the chiral logarithms for heavy-light quantities only through the light meson propagators in loops. There are also new analytic contributions coming from additional terms in the Lagrangian involving heavy-light and light mesons. Using this heavy-light staggered chiral perturbation theory, we perform the one-loop calculation of the B (or D) meson leptonic decay cons…
Consistency of present-day lattice QCD simulations with dynamical (``sea'') staggered fermions requires that the determinant of the staggered-fermion Dirac operator, $det(D)$, be equal to $det^4(D_{rg}) det(T)$ where $D_{rg}$ is a local one-flavor lattice Dirac operator, and $T$ is a local operator containing only excitations with masses of the order of the cutoff. Using renormalization-group (RG) block transformations I show that, in the limit of infinitely many RG steps, the required decomposition exists for the free staggered operator in the ``flavor representation.'' The resulting one-flav…
Motivated by simulation results for octet and decuplet baryon masses using 2+1 flavors of light staggered quarks, we are incorporating staggered lattice artifacts into heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory, calculating the masses of various staggered baryons, and studying the connection between the staggered baryons of the chiral theory and the staggered baryons of simulations. We present order (m_q)^(3/2) loop contributions to the masses of several staggered nucleons and discuss interpolating fields that create these states.
We measure the low lying eigenmodes of an overlap Dirac operator on 2--flavor staggered configurations. By comparing the eigenmode distribution to the predictions of Random Matrix Theory we test to what accuracy staggered configurations describe continuum QCD. The agreement between the numerical data and RMT implies that at our quark mass values the lattice artifacts of the staggered configurations are comparable to overlap configurations. We identify the overlap valence mass that best matches the staggered sea quarks and predict the value of the infinite volume 2-flavor chiral condensate.
We report updated results for $B_K$ calculated using HYP-smeared staggered fermions on the MILC asqtad 2+1 flavor lattices. We use four different lattice spacings ($a \approx$ 0.12, 0.09, 0.06 and 0.045 fm) to control the continuum extrapolation. We use SU(2) staggered chiral perturbation theory to do the data analysis. We find that $B_K(\text{NDR}, μ=2 \text{GeV}) = 0.526 \pm 0.007 \pm 0.024$ and $\hat{B}_K = B_K(\text{RGI}) = 0.720 \pm 0.010 \pm 0.033$. Here the first error is statistical and the second systematic. The dominant source of error is that due to our use of a truncated (one-loop)…
We present a review on recent progress in staggered chiral perturbation theory (SChPT). In the last decade, the scope of the application of SChPT has been extended beyond the level of calibration into the region of prediction with high precision. SChPT becomes an essential tool to do the data analysis reliably for physical observables calculated using improved staggered fermions. Here, we focus on the following examples: pion spectrum, pion decay constants, $\varepsilon_K$, and $π-π$ scattering amplitudes. In each subject, we review the recent progress and future prospects.
We investigate the parity-broken phase structure for staggered and naive fermions in the Gross-Neveu model as a toy model of QCD. We consider a generalized staggered Gross-Neveu model including two types of four-point interactions. We use generalized mass terms to split the doublers for both staggered and naive fermions. The phase boundaries derived from the gap equations show that the mass splitting of tastes results in an Aoki phase both in the staggered and naive cases. We also discuss the continuum limit of these models and explore taking the chirally-symmetric limit by fine-tuning a mass …
At non-zero lattice spacing the flavor symmetry of staggered fermions is broken to a discrete subgroup. We show that in the chiral limit the flavor symmetry of the pion effective Lagrangian enlarges to an SO(4) subgroup of the continuum SU(4) symmetry. This provides an explanation for observed degeneracies in the pion spectrum.
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 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.
Staggered fermions with 4 tastes are expected to describe 4-flavor QCD in the continuum limit, therefore at finite lattice spacing the staggered determinant should be equivalent to an SU(4) flavor-symmetric system up to lattice artifacts. This equivalence is the starting point of the 4th root trick used to reduce the number of fermion flavors and provides the only consistent description of 2 or 1 flavor systems. In this paper we argue that the quark mass of the underlying flavor symmetric theory differs from the staggered mass by an additive term due to the taste breaking of the staggered acti…
In this talk, I will give an overview of the theoretical status of staggered Lattice QCD with the "fourth-root trick." In this regularization of QCD, a separate staggered quark field is used for each physical flavor, and the inherent four-fold multiplicity that comes with the use of staggered fermions is removed by taking the fourth root of the staggered determinant for each flavor. At nonzero lattice spacing, the resulting theory is nonlocal and not unitary, but there are now strong arguments that this disease is cured in the continuum limit. In addition, the approach to the continuum limit c…
Accurately calculating the mass of flavor-singlet meson states from numerical lattice simulations is an important milestone for lattice QCD. Careful measurement of the full pseudoscalar flavor-singlet propagator is also a crucial step in understanding the dynamics of the fermion sea on the lattice, in particular for potentially non-trivial formulations such as with 2+1-flavor staggered fermions. We briefly describe details of a dynamical QCD calculation using improved staggered fermions, with 30,000 trajectories, that was run for our studies of flavour singlet mesons.
Growing evidence indicates that in the continuum limit the rooted staggered action is in the correct QCD universality class, the non-local terms arising from taste breaking can be viewed as lattice artifacts. In this paper we consider the 2-flavor Asqtad staggered action at a lattice spacing of approximately 0.13 fm and probe the properties of the staggered configurations by an overlap valence Dirac operator. By comparing the distribution of the overlap eigenmodes to continuum QCD predictions we investigate if/when the lattice artifacts are small as a function of the staggered quark mass. We d…
One exciting possibility of new physics beyond the Standard Model is that the fundamental Higgs sector is replaced by a strongly-interacting gauge theory, known as technicolor. A viable theory must break chiral symmetry dynamically, like in QCD, to generate Goldstone bosons which become the longitudinal components of the W and Z. By measuring the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator, one can determine if chiral symmetry is in fact spontaneously broken. We simulate SU(3) gauge theory with n_s=2 and 3 staggered flavors in the fundamental representation, corresponding to N_f=8 and 12 flavors in the …
I study two-flavor staggered chiral perturbation theory in the light pseudoscalar sector. The pion mass and decay constant are calculated through NLO in the partially-quenched case. In the limit where the strange quark mass is large compared to the light quark masses and the taste splittings, I show that the SU(2) staggered chiral theory emerges from the SU(3) staggered chiral theory, as expected. Explicit relations between SU(2) and SU(3) low energy constants and taste-violating parameters are given. The results are useful for SU(2) chiral fits to asqtad data and allow one to incorporate effe…
We resolve contradictions in the literature concerning the origins and size of unphysical flavor-changing strong interactions generated by the staggered-quark discretization of QCD. We show that the leading contributions are tree-level in $\order(a^2)$ and that they can be removed by adding three correction terms to the link operator in the standard action. These corrections are part of the systematic Symanzik improvement of the staggered-quark action. We present a new improved action for staggered quarks that is accurate up to errors of $\order(a^4,a^2α_s)$ --- more accurate than most, if not…
We have studied the 3-flavor, finite temperature, QCD phase transition with staggred fermions on an $ N_t=4$ lattice. By studying a variety of quark masses we have located the critical point, $m_c$, where the first order 3-flavor transition ends as lying in the region $0.32 \le m_c \le 0.35$ in lattice units
We study chiral properties of eigenvalue spectrum for staggered quarks. We present a new method to identify would-be zero modes and nonzero modes using their symmetry and chiral properties. Here, we review the traditional method with HYP improved staggered quarks, and extend it to a completely new method which uses the chiral Ward identities and leakage patterns to achieve the goal.
We investigate general properties of the eigenvalue spectrum for improved staggered quarks. We introduce a new chirality operator $[γ_5 \otimes 1]$ and a new shift operator $[1 \otimes ξ_5]$, which respect the same recursion relation as the $γ_5$ operator in the continuum. Then we show that matrix elements of the chirality operator sandwiched between two eigenstates of the staggered Dirac operator are related to those of the shift operator by the Ward identity of the conserved $U(1)_A$ symmetry of staggered fermion actions. We perform a numerical study in quenched QCD using HYP staggered quark…
We present results on the chiral and deconfinement properties of the QCD transition at finite temperature. We performed calculations using asqtad and HISQ/tree actions using lattices with temporal extent N_tau=6, 8 and 12 allowing to control the approach to the continuum limit. We analyze the chiral transition in terms of universal O(N) scaling functions. From peaks in the scaling functions we perform a simultaneous continuum extrapolation for HISQ/tree and asqtad to derive the critical temperature, T_c= 157 +/- 6 MeV.
The Asqtad improved staggered fermion formalism has been a valuable tool in successfully calculating the non-singlet parts of the hadronic spectrum. We are engaged in a project to calculate the spectrum of the pseudoscalar singlet mesons with 2+1-flavor Asqtad staggered gauge configurations. Propagators of flavor-singlet states incorporate contributions from both disconnected and connected diagrams, and hence are sensitive to any differences in the actions governing the sea and valence fermions on the lattice. As such, they also present the possibility of a probe of the validity of the ``fourt…
The construction of the first baryon operators for staggered lattice QCD exploited the taste symmetry to emulate physical quark flavor; contemporary 2+1 flavor simulations explicitly include three physical quark flavors and necessitate interpreting a valence sector with twelve quarks. After discussing expected features of the resulting baryon spectrum, I consider the spectra of operators transforming irreducibly under SU(3)xGTS, the direct product of flavor SU(3) and the geometrical time-slice group of the 1-flavor staggered theory. I then describe the construction of a set of maximally local …
We compute O(alpha_s) lattice-to-continuum perturbative matching coefficients for the Delta S=2 flavor changing four-quark operators for the Asqtad improved staggered action. In conjunction with lattice simulations with three flavors of light, dynamical quarks, our results yield an unquenched determination of B_K, the parameter that determines the amount of indirect CP violation in the neutral kaon system. Its value is an important input for the unitarity triangle analysis of weak decays.
We examine the taste structure of eigenvectors of the staggered-fermion Dirac operator. We derive a set of conditions on the eigenvectors of modes with small eigenvalues (near-zero modes), such that staggered fermions reproduce the 't Hooft vertex in the continuum limit. We also show that, assuming these conditions, the correlators of flavor-singlet mesons are free of contributions singular in $1/m$, where $m$ is the quark mass. This conclusion holds also when a single flavor of sea quark is represented by the fourth root of the staggered-fermion determinant. We then test numerically, using th…
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…
Based on recent work by Adams, I construct a lattice fermion operator that fully lifts the staggered flavor degeneracy. The resulting operator is of Wilson type but smaller by a factor of 4, better conditioned and contains 3 instead of 15 doublers. It is further suggested that this operator may be used as a candidate kernel operator to an overlap construction. Prospects for practical applications and potential problems of the new discretizations are briefly discussed.
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.
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…
As one test of the validity of the staggered-fermion fourth-root determinant trick, we examine the suppression of the topological susceptibility of the QCD vacuum in the limit of small quark mass. The suppression is sensitive to the number of light sea quark flavors. Our study is done in the presence of 2+1 flavors of dynamical quarks in the improved staggered fermion formulation. Variance-reduction techniques provide better control of statistical errors. New results from staggered chiral perturbation theory account for taste-breaking effects in the low-quark mass behavior of the susceptibilit…
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…
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…
Different versions of improved staggered fermions can be used as valence quarks to reduce discretization effects in lattice QCD calculations while increasing statistics on existing staggered gauge ensembles. Such mixed-action simulations can be used to improve determinations of light quark masses, Gasser-Leutwyler couplings, decay constants, and other parameters relevant to particle phenomenology. We recall the generalization of ordinary, unmixed staggered chiral perturbation theory required to describe data from lattice calculations with a mixed action such as with HYP staggered valence quark…
In staggered QCD, many staggered baryons correspond to each physical state. Taste violations lift the continuum degeneracies of the baryons and introduce nonzero off-diagonal elements in the mass matrix. While presenting no problem of principle, these splittings and mixings complicate analyses of simulation results. However, in special cases operators with good SU(3) quantum numbers can be used to circumvent the splittings and mixings. I review what has been learned from staggered chiral perturbation theory, outline a program of attack for the amenable cases, and summarize the present status o…
We present preliminary results from exploring the phase diagram of finite temperature QCD with three degenerate flavors and with two light flavors and the mass of the third held approximately at the strange quark mass. We use an order $α_s^2 a^2, a^4$ Symanzik improved gauge action and an order $α_s a^2, a^4$ improved staggered quark action. The improved staggered action leads to a dispersion relation with diminished lattice artifacts, and hence better thermodynamic properties. It decreases the flavor symmetry breaking of staggered quarks substantially, and we estimate that at the transition t…
As a first step towards constructing chiral models on the lattice with staggered fermions, we study a U(1) model with axial-vector coupling to an external gauge field in two dimensions. In our approach gauge invariance is broken, but it is restored in the classical continuum limit. We find that the continuum divergence relations for the vector and axial-vector currents are reproduced, up to contact terms, which we determine analytically. The current divergence relations are also studied numerically for smooth external gauge fields with topological charge zero. We furthermore investigate the ef…
We present preliminary results from exploring the phase diagram of finite temperature QCD with three degenerate flavors and with two light flavors and the mass of the third held approximately at the strange quark mass. We use an order $α_s^2 a^2, a^4$ Symanzik improved gauge action and an order $α_s a^2, a^4$ improved staggered quark action. The improved staggered action leads to a dispersion relation with diminished lattice artifacts, and hence better thermodynamic properties. It decreases the flavor symmetry breaking of staggered quarks substantially, and we estimate that at the transition t…
We present results of the masses of taste non-Goldstone $(F \ne ξ_5)$ pions and kaons calculated up to the next-to-leading order in the SU(3) staggered chiral perturbation theory (SChPT). The results can be used to fit data and to understand taste symmetry breaking effect quantitatively. The final expressions for the non-Goldstone masses contain 20 low energy constants unique to the non-Goldstone sector. We have calculated the several cases such as the full QCD, partially quenched QCD, and quenched QCD in the $N_f=1+1+1$ flavor and $N_f=2+1$ flavor cases in the SU(3) and SU(2) SChPT. In this p…
We discuss the Schrödinger functional in lattice QCD with staggered fermions and relate it, in the classical continuum limit, to the Schrödinger functional regularized with Wilson fermions. We compute the strong coupling constant defined via the Schrödinger functional with staggered fermions at one loop and show that it agrees with the continuum running coupling constant in the Schrödinger functional formalism. We compute this running coupling in the ``weak coupling phase'' of many flavor QCD numerically at several values of the bare coupling and for several system sizes from $L/a=4$ to 12. Th…
We present a study of the flavor symmetry breaking in the pion spectrum for various improved staggered fermion actions. To study the effects of link fattening and tadpole improvement, we use three different variants of the p4 action - p4fat3, p4fat7, and p4fat7tad. These are compared to Asqtad and also to naive staggered. To study the pattern of symmetry breaking, we measure all 15 meson masses in the 4-flavor staggered theory. The measurements are done on a quenched gauge background, generated using a one-loop improved Symanzik action with $β=10/g^2 = 7.40, 7.75,$ and 8.00, corresponding to l…
We review several results that have been obtained using lattice QCD with the staggered quark formulation. Our focus is on the quantities that have been calculated numerically with low statistical errors and have been extrapolated to the physical quark mass limit and continuum limit using staggered chiral perturbation theory. We limit our discussion to a brief introduction to staggered quarks, and applications of staggered chiral perturbation theory to the pion mass, decay constant, and heavy-light meson decay constants.
A popular approximation in lattice gauge theory is an extrapolation in the number of fermion species away from the four fold degeneracy natural with the staggered fermions formulation. I show that at finite lattice spacing and for an odd number of flavors this extrapolation misses terms which, on general principles, must be present in the continuum theory. For a correct continuum limit, this forces unphysical singularities in parameter regions where continuum physics is smooth and all physical particles are massive. These singularities are not expected with other lattice regulators. Finally, I…
We present results for $B_K$ calculated using HYP-smeared improved staggered fermions on the MILC asqtad lattices. In this report, the data is analyzed using the results of SU(2) staggered chiral perturbation theory (SChPT). We outline the derivation of the NLO SU(2) SChPT result, explain our fitting procedure, and outline how we estimate systematic errors. We also show the light sea-quark mass and lattice spacing dependence for both SU(2) and SU(3)-based analyses. Our preliminary result from the SU(2) analysis is $B_K(\text{NDR}, μ= 2 \text{GeV}) = 0.512 \pm 0.014 \pm 0.034$ and $\hat{B}_K = …
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 report preliminary results on the chiral and deconfinement aspects of the QCD transition at finite temperature using the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action on lattices with temporal extent of N_τ=6 and 8. The chiral aspects of the transition are studied in terms of quark condensates and the disconnected chiral susceptibility. We study the deconfinement transition in terms of the strange quark number susceptibility and the renormalized Polyakov loop. We made continuum estimates for some quantities and find reasonably good agreement between our results and the recent continuum extr…
In the light pseudoscalar sector, we study rooted staggered chiral perturbation theory in the two-flavor case. The pion mass and decay constant are calculated through NLO for a partially-quenched theory. In the limit where the strange quark mass is large compared to the light quark masses and the taste splittings, we show that the SU(2) staggered chiral theory emerges from the SU(3) staggered chiral theory, as expected. Explicit relations between SU(2) and SU(3) low energy constants and taste-violating parameters are given. A brief summary of updated SU(2) chiral fits to the MILC lattice data …
The determination of $\vert V_{us}\vert$ from kaon semileptonic decays requires the value of the form factor $f_+(q^2=0)$, which can be calculated precisely on the lattice. We provide the one-loop partially quenched staggered chiral perturbation theory expressions that may be employed to analyze staggered simulations of $f_+(q^2)$ with three light flavors. We consider both the case of a mixed action, where the valence and sea sectors have different staggered actions, and the standard case where these actions are the same. The momentum transfer $q^2$ of the form factor is allowed to have an arb…
Staggered Domain Wall Fermions (SDWF) combine the attractive chiral properties of staggered fermions with those of domain wall fermions. SDWF describe four flavors with exact U(1)xU(1) flavor chiral symmetry. An extra lattice dimension is introduced and the full SU(4)xSU(4) flavor chiral symmetry is recovered as its size is increased. Here, the free theory of SDWF is described and a preliminary discussion of the interacting case is presented. SDWF may be well suited for numerical simulation of lattice QCD thermodynamics.
We study the phase diagram for staggered quarks using chiral perturbation theory. In beyond-the-standard-model simulations using a large number ($>8$) of staggered fermions, unphysical phases appear for coarse enough lattice spacing. We argue chiral perturbation theory can be used to interpret one of these phases. In addition, we show only three broken phases for staggered quarks exist, at least for lattice spacings in the regime $a^2\ll Λ^2_{\rm QCD}$.
We report results for the interaction measure, pressure and energy density for nonzero temperature QCD with 2+1 flavors of improved staggered quarks. In our simulations we use a Symanzik improved gauge action and the Asqtad $O(a^2)$ improved staggered quark action for lattices with temporal extent $N_t=4$ and 6. The heavy quark mass $m_s$ is fixed at approximately the physical strange quark mass and the two degenerate light quarks have masses $m_{ud}\approx0.1 m_s$ or $0.2 m_s$. The calculation of the thermodynamic observables employs the integral method where energy density and pressure are o…
The staggered fermion approach to build models with chiral fermions is briefly reviewed. The method is tested in a U(1) model with axial vector coupling in two and four dimensions.
