The determination of $|V_{us}|$ 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 chiral perturbation theory expressions both with and without including the effects of staggered quarks for all form factors at finite volume and with partially twisted boundary conditions for both the vector current and scalar density matrix elements at all $q^2$. We point out that at finite volume there are more form factors than just $f_+$ and $f_-$ for the vector current matrix element but that the Ward identity is fully satisfied. The size of the finite-volume corrections at present lattice sizes is small. This will help improve the lattice determination of $f_+(q^2=0)$ since the finite-volume error is the dominant error source for some calculations. The size of the finite-volume corrections may be estimated on a single lattice ensemble by comparing results for various twist choices.
The quark-mass dependence of the eta in the Schwinger model, which -- like the eta-prime in QCD -- becomes massive through the axial anomaly, is studied on the lattice with N_f=0,1,2. Staggered quarks are used, with a rooted determinant for N_f=1. In the chiral limit the Schwinger mass is reproduced, which suggests that the anomaly is being treated correctly.
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…
We discuss the properties of 't Hooft vertices in partially quenched and rooted versions of QCD in the continuum. These theories have a physical subspace, equivalent to ordinary QCD, that is contained within a larger space that includes many unphysical correlation functions. We find that the 't Hooft vertices in the physical subspace have the expected form, despite the presence of unphysical 't Hooft vertices appearing in correlation functions that have an excess of valence quarks (or ghost quarks). We resolve an apparent paradox that arises when one uses rooted staggered fermions to study one…
We extend the construction of the Symanzik effective action to include rooted staggered fermions, starting from a generalization of the renormalization-group approach to rooted staggered fermions. The Symanzik action, together with the usual construction of a partially quenched chiral effective theory from a local, partially quenched, fundamental theory, can then be used to derive the chiral effective theory. The latter reproduces rooted staggered chiral perturbation theory.
We extend our lagrangian technique for chiral perturbation theory for quenched QCD to include theories in which only some of the quarks are quenched. We discuss the relationship between the partially quenched theory and a theory in which only the unquenched quarks are present. We also investigate the peculiar infrared divergences associated with the $η'$ in the quenched approximation, and find the conditions under which such divergences can appear in a partially quenched theory. We then apply our results to staggered fermion QCD in which the square root of the fermion determinant is taken, usi…
I look at the rooting controversy from a historical point of view and review how I have come to the conclusion that these simulations involving staggered quarks must be discarded.
We reply to Creutz's comments on our paper " 't Hooft vertices, partial quenching, and rooted staggered QCD." We show that his criticisms are incorrect and result from a misunderstanding both of our work, and of the related work of Adams.
We investigate the continuum limit of the rooted staggered determinant in the 2-dimensional Schwinger model. We match both the unrooted and rooted staggered determinant with an overlap fermion determinant of two (one) flavors and a local pure gauge effective action by fitting the coefficients of the effective action and the mass of the overlap operator. The residue of this fit measures the difference of the staggered and overlap fermion actions. We show that this residue scales at least as O(a^2), implying that any difference, be it local or non-local, between the staggered and overlap actions…
We investigate the continuum limit of the rooted staggered action in the 2-dimensional Schwinger model. We match both the unrooted and rooted staggered determinants with an overlap fermion determinant of two (one) flavors and a local pure gauge effective action by fitting the coefficients of the effective action and the mass of the overlap operator. The residue of this fit measures the difference of the staggered and overlap fermion actions. We show that this residue scales at least as O(a^2), implying that any difference, be it local or non-local, between the staggered and overlap actions bec…
Calculations using staggered quarks augmented with a root of the fermion determinant to reduce doubling give a qualitatively incorrect behavior in the small quark mass region. Attempts to circumvent this problem for the continuum limit involve an unproven combination of unphysical states, a loss of unitarity, and a rather peculiar non-commutation of limits.
Even highly improved variants of lattice QCD with staggered fermions show significant violations of taste symmetry at currently accessible lattice spacings. In addition, the "rooting trick" is used in order to simulate with the correct number of light sea quarks, and this makes the lattice theory nonlocal, even though there is good reason to believe that the continuum limit is in the correct universality class. In order to understand scaling violations, it is thus necessary to extend the construction of the Symanzik effective theory to include rooted staggered fermions. We show how this can be…
We present a scaling analysis in the 1-flavor Schwinger model with the full overlap and the rooted staggered determinant. In the latter case the chiral and continuum limit of the scalar condensate do not commute, while for overlap fermions they do. For the topological susceptibility a universal continuum limit is suggested, as is for the partition function and the Leutwyler-Smilga sum rule. In the heavy-quark force no difference is visible even at finite coupling. Finally, a direct comparison between the complete overlap and the rooted staggered determinant yields evidence that their ratio is …
We summarize results for partially quenched chiral perturbation theory and indicate an application to staggered fermion QCD in which the square root of the determinant is taken to reduce the number of flavors from four to two.
We give a preliminary report on the hadron spectrum on an ensemble of quenched lattices at $β$ values of 6.0, 6.2 and 6.4, using staggered fermions and collaborators Rajan Gupta and Steve Sharpe. Because of the relatively small number of configurations we pay marginally more attention to the question of statistics than in previous analyses. We are unable to discredit quenched QCD.
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…
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 fermion formulation. I show that the extrapolation procedure mutilates the expected continuum holomorphic behavior in the quark masses. The conventional resolution proposes canceling the unphysical singularities with a plethora of extra states appearing at finite lattice spacing. This unproven conjecture requires an explicit loss of unitarity and locality. Even if correct, the approach implies large cutoff effects in the low-energy f…
In hep-lat/0701018, Creutz claims that the rooting trick used in simulations of staggered fermions to reduce the number of tastes misses key physics whenever the desired theory has an odd number of continuum flavors, and uses this argument to call into question the rooting trick in general. Here we show that his argument fails as the continuum limit is approached, and therefore does not imply any problem for staggered simulations. We also show that the cancellations necessary to restore unitarity in physical correlators in the continuum limit are a straightforward consequence of the restoratio…
In typical statistical mechanical systems the grand canonical partition function at finite volume is proportional to a polynomial of the fugacity $e^{μ/T}$. The zero of this Lee-Yang polynomial closest to the origin determines the radius of convergence of the Taylor expansion of the pressure around $μ=0$. The computationally cheapest formulation of lattice QCD, rooted staggered fermions, with the usual definition of the rooted determinant, does not admit such a Lee-Yang polynomial. We argue that the radius of convergence is then bounded by the spectral gap of the reduced matrix of the unrooted…
We investigate light hadron spectroscopy with an improved quenched staggered quark action. We compare the results obtained with an improved gauge plus an improved quark action, an improved gauge plus standard quark action, and the standard gauge plus standard quark action. Most of the improvement in the spectroscopy results is due to the improved gauge sector. However, the improved quark action substantially reduces violations of Lorentz invariance, as evidenced by the meson dispersion relations.
Without chiral extrapolation, we achieved a realistic nucleon to (ρ)-meson mass ratio of (m_N/m_ρ= 1.23 \pm 0.04 ({\rm statistical}) \pm 0.02 ({\rm systematic})) in our quenched lattice QCD numerical calculation with staggered quarks. The systematic error is mostly from finite-volume effect and the finite-spacing effect is negligible. The flavor symmetry breaking in the pion and (ρ) meson is no longer visible. The lattice cutoff is set at 3.63 (\pm) 0.06 GeV, the spatial lattice volume is (2.59 (\pm) 0.05 fm)(^3), and bare quarks mass as low as 4.5 MeV are used. Possible quenched chiral effect…
We present a refined calculation of the eta-prime mass using staggered fermions and Wuppertal smeared operators. We use quenched and dynamical configurations of size 16^3x32 with Nf=0, Nf=2 and Nf=4, and compare our results with the expected forms from quenched, partially quenched and unquenched chiral perturbation thoery.
We discuss chiral limit of light hadron mass from our quenched staggered calculations with a high lattice cutoff of (a^{-1})(\sim)3.7 GeV at (β)=6.5 and a large lattice volume of (48^3\times 64). We added six heavier quark mass values of (m_qa)=0.0075, 0.015, 0.02, 0.03, 0.04 and 0.05 to the previously existing 0.01, 0.005, 0.0025, and 0.00125. An interesting curvature is observed in the (m_π^2/m_q) to (m_q) plot near (m_qa)=0.01.
We extend previous work on finite-size effects with dynamical staggered quarks to the quenched approximation. We again emphasize the large volume limit that is of interest for spectrum calculations which may hope to approach the experimental values. Relying on new calculations at $6/g^2=5.7$ and recent work with weaker couplings, we extrapolate to the continuum limit and find a nucleon to rho mass ratio in close agreement with the experimental value and the value obtained by extrapolations from calculations with Wilson quarks. Additional calculations that should be done to improve the reliabil…
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.
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 report our light hadron mass calculation based on an increased statistics of 250 quenched gauge configurations on a (48^3 \times 64) lattice at (β= 6.5). Quark propagators are calculated for each of these configurations with staggered wall source and point sink at quark mass values of (m_q = 0.01, 0.005, 0.0025) and (0.00125). We also did additional calculations to improve our understanding of systematic biases arising from autocorrelation, source size, and propagator calculations. Our earlier conclusions that the flavor symmetry breaking is reduced and the ratio (m_N/m_ρ(\sim 1.25(4))) is …
We present the first 2+1 flavour spectrum measurements of glueball states using high statistics simulations with improved staggered fermions. We find a spectrum consistent with quenched measurements of scalar, pseudoscalar andtensor glueball states. The measurements were made using 5000 configurations at a lattice spacing of 0.123 fm and pion mass of 280 MeV and 3000 configurations at 0.092 fm with a pion mass of 360 MeV. We see some evidence of coupling to 2 pion states. We compare our results with the experimental glueball candidate spectrum as well as quenched glueball estimates.
We present preliminary results for $ε'/ε$ calculated using HYP staggered fermions in the quenched approximation. We compare different choices of quenched penguin operators.
We calculate the light quark spectrum of lattice QCD in the quenched approximation using Kogut-Susskind quarks. By combining results for different lattice spacings, several volumes and five quark masses, we are able to take the light quark mass, infinite volume, continuum limit. When we use non-linear chiral extrapolations, we find that the nucleon to rho mass ratio is 1.254 +- 0.018 +- 0.027, where the errors are statistical and systematic (within the quenched approximation), respectively. This should be compared with the experimental value of 1.22. Our results indicate that the error due to …
We study the effects of improvement on the locality of square-rooted staggered Dirac operators in lattice QCD simulations. We find the localisation lengths of the improved operators (FAT7TAD and ASQTAD) to be very similar to that of the one-link operator studied by Bunk et al., being at least the Compton wavelength of the lightest particle in the theory, even in the continuum limit. We conclude that improvement has no effect. We discuss the implications of this result for the locality of the nth-rooted fermion determinant used to reduce the number of sea quark flavours, and for possible stagge…
In a continuation of an ongoing program, we use staggered chiral perturbation theory to calculate the one-loop chiral logarithms and analytic terms in the pseudoscalar meson leptonic decay constants, $f_{π^+_5}$ and $f_{K^+_5}$. We consider the partially quenched, ``full QCD'' (with three dynamical flavors), and quenched cases.
We discuss how to formulate a staggered chiral perturbation theory. This amounts to a generalization of the Lee-Sharpe Lagrangian to include more than one flavor (i.e. multiple staggered fields), which turns out to be nontrivial. One loop corrections to pion and kaon masses and decay constants are computed as examples in three cases: the quenched, partially quenched, and full (unquenched) case. The results for the one loop mass and decay constant corrections have already been presented in Ref. [1].
To reduce errors in light-quark mass determinations, it is now necessary to consider electromagnetic contributions to light-meson masses. Calculations using staggered quarks and quenched photons are currently underway. Suitably-extended chiral perturbation theory is necessary to extrapolate the lattice data to the physical limit. Here we give (preliminary) results for light-meson masses using staggered chiral perturbation theory including electromagnetism, and discuss the extent to which quenched-photon simulations can improve quark-mass calculations.
The staggered quark action on anisotropic lattices is studied. We carry out numerical simulations in the quenched approximation at three values of lattice spacing ($a_σ^{-1}=1-2$ GeV) with the anisotropy $ξ= a_σ/a_τ=4$, where $a_σ$ and $a_τ$ are the spatial and temporal lattice spacings, respectively. The bare anisotropy $γ_F$ in the quark action is numerically tuned through the ratio of meson masses in the fine and coarse directions, and through the dispersion relation of a meson, so that the renormalized fermionic anisotropy coincides with that of the gauge field. The discrepancy between the…
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…
We study calibration procedures of the staggered quarks on anisotropic lattices in the quenched approximation and in $N_f = 2$ dynamical simulations. For the calibration conditions we adopt the hadronic radii $r_0$ and the meson masses in the temporal and spatial directions. On the quenched lattice, we calibrate the quark field and compare the result with the result determined using the meson dispersion relation. In dynamical simulations, we determine the anisotropy parameters $γ_G$ and $γ_F$ simultaneously within 1% accuracy at renormalized anisotropy $ξ= a_s/a_t = 4$.
Improved results for $B_K$ are discussed. Scaling corrections are argued to be of $O(a^2)$, leading to a reduction in the systematic error. For a kaon composed of degenerate quarks, the quenched result is ${\widehat{B}_K} = 0.825 \pm 0.027 \pm 0.023$.
We demonstrate the viability of improved staggered light quarks in studies of heavy-light systems. Our method for constructing heavy-light operators exploits the close relation between naive and staggered fermions. The new approach is tested on quenched configurations using several staggered actionsn combined with nonrelativistic heavy quarks. The B_s meson kinetic mass, the hyperfine and 1P-1S splittings in B_s, and the decay constant f_{B_s} are calculated and compared to previous quenched lattice studies. An important technical detail, Bayesian curve-fitting, is discussed at length.
We have computed the eta-prime pseudoscalar octet mass splitting using staggered fermions on both dynamical and quenched gauge configurations. We have used Wuppertal smeared operators to reduce excited state contributions. We compare our results with the theoretical forms predicted by partially quenched chiral perturbation theory in the lowest order. Using lattice volumes of size 16^3 x 32 with a^{-1}=2GeV we obtain results consistent with the physical eta-prime mass. We also demonstrate that the flavor singlet piece of the eta-prime mass comes from zero modes of the Dirac operator.
We calculate the form factors for the semileptonic decays of heavy-light pseudoscalar mesons in partially quenched staggered chiral perturbation theory (\schpt), working to leading order in $1/m_Q$, where $m_Q$ is the heavy quark mass. We take the light meson in the final state to be a pseudoscalar corresponding to the exact chiral symmetry of staggered quarks. The treatment assumes the validity of the standard prescription for representing the staggered ``fourth root trick'' within \schpt by insertions of factors of 1/4 for each sea quark loop. Our calculation is based on an existing partiall…
We calculate the kaon B-parameter, B_K, to next-to-leading order in staggered chiral perturbation theory. We find expressions for partially quenched QCD with three sea quarks, quenched QCD, and full QCD with m_u = m_d but not equal to m_s. We extend the usual power counting to include the effects of using perturbative (rather than non-perturbative) matching factors. Taste breaking enters through the O(a^2) terms in the effective action, through O(a^2) terms from the discretization of operators, and through the truncation of matching factors. These effects cause mixing with several additional o…
We report our quenched staggered light hadron mass calculation at the coupling of β= 6.5 on a 48^3 \times 64 lattice, based on an increased statistics of two hundred gauge configurations. Staggered quark wall sources with mass of m_q a = 0.01, 0.005, 0.0025 and 0.00125 are used. Flavor symmetry is restored for pion and ρmeson. The lattice scale is estimated to be a^{-1} = 3.7(2) GeV.
We present a calculation of the mass of the eta-prime meson using quenched and dynamical staggered fermions. We also discuss the effects of "cooling" and suggest its use as a quantitative tool.
To investigate the viability of the 4th root trick for the staggered fermion determinant in a simpler setting, we consider a two taste (flavor) lattice fermion formulation with no taste mixing but with exact taste-nonsinglet chiral symmetries analogous to the taste-nonsinglet $U(1)_A$ symmetry of staggered fermions. M. Creutz's objections to the rooting trick apply just as much in this setting. To counter them we show that the formulation has robust would-be zero-modes in topologically nontrivial gauge backgrounds, and that these manifest themselves in a viable way in the rooted fermion determ…
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.
We show how to compute chiral logarithms that take into account both the $\cO(a^2)$ taste-symmetry breaking of staggered fermions and the fourth-root trick that produces one taste per flavor. The calculation starts from the Lee-Sharpe Lagrangian generalized to multiple flavors. An error in a previous treatment by one of us is explained and corrected. The one loop chiral logarithm corrections to the pion and kaon masses in the full (unquenched), partially quenched, and quenched cases are computed as examples.
We present our initial study of the electromagnetic splittings of charged and neutral mesons, and the violation of Dashen's theorem. Hadron masses are calculated on MILC N_f=2+1 QCD ensembles at lattice spacing \approx 0.15fm, together with quenched non-compact U(1) configurations. The O(a^2) tadpole improved staggered quark (asqtad) action is used both for the sea quarks and for six different valence quark masses. Chiral extrapolations are performed using partially quenched chiral perturbation theory incorporating electromagnetic corrections.
With sufficiently light up and down quarks the isovector ($a_0$) and isosinglet ($f_0$) scalar meson propagators are dominated at large distance by two-meson states. In the staggered fermion formulation of lattice quantum chromodynamics, taste-symmetry breaking causes a proliferation of two-meson states that further complicates the analysis of these channels. Many of them are unphysical artifacts of the lattice approximation. They are expected to disappear in the continuum limit. The staggered-fermion fourth-root procedure has its purported counterpart in rooted staggered chiral perturbation t…
We merge heavy quark effective theory with staggered chiral perturbation theory to calculate heavy-light (B, D) meson quantities. We present results at NLO for the $B(D)$ meson decay constant in the partially quenched and full QCD cases, and discuss the calculation of the form factors for $B(D) \to π(K) \ell ν$ decays.
Last year, we reported our first results on the determination of Gasser-Leutwyler coefficients using partially quenched lattice QCD with three flavors of dynamical staggered quarks. We give an update on our progress in determining two of these coefficients, including an exhaustive effort to estimate all sources of systematic error. At this conference, we have heard about algorithmic techniques to reduce staggered flavor symmetry breaking and a method to incorporate staggered flavor breaking into the partially quenched chiral Lagrangian. We comment on our plans to integrate these developments i…
We study the improvement of staggered fermions using hypercubically smeared (HYP) links. We calculate the strange quark mass and the kaon B-parameter, $B_K$, in quenched QCD on a $16^3 \times 64$ lattice at $β=6.0$. We find $m_s(\bar{\rm MS},2 {\rm GeV})=101.2\pm1.3\pm4 $MeV and $B_K(\bar{\rm MS},2 {\rm GeV}) = 0.578 \pm 0.018\pm 0.042$, where the first error is from statistics and fitting, and the second from using one-loop matching factors. The scale ($1/a=1.95$GeV) is set by $M_ρ$, and $m_s$ is determined using the kaon mass. Comparing to quenched results obtained using unimproved staggered…
Complete spectra of the staggered Dirac operator $\Dirac$ are determined in quenched four-dimensional $SU(2)$ gauge fields, and also in the presence of dynamical fermions. Periodic as well as antiperiodic boundary conditions are used. An attempt is made to relate the performance of multigrid (MG) and conjugate gradient (CG) algorithms for propagators with the distribution of the eigenvalues of~$\Dirac$. The convergence of the CG algorithm is determined only by the condition number~$κ$ and by the lattice size. Since~$κ$'s do not vary significantly when quarks become dynamic, CG convergence in u…
We calculate the B -> D and B -> D* form factors at zero recoil in Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory. We consider heavy-light mesons in which only the light (u, d, or s) quark is staggered; current lattice simulations generally use a highly improved action such as the Fermilab or NRQCD action for the heavy (b or c) quark. We work to lowest nontrivial order in the heavy quark expansion and to one-loop in the chiral expansion. We present results for a partially quenched theory with three sea quarks in which there are no mass degeneracies (the "1+1+1" theory) and for a partially quenched theor…
We consider partially quenched, mixed chiral perturbation theory with staggered sea and Ginsparg-Wilson valence quarks in order to extract a chiral-continuum extrapolation expression for the vector meson mass up to order O(a^2), at one-loop level. Based on general principles, we accomplish the task without explicitly constructing a sophisticated, heavy vector meson chiral Lagrangian.
Measurements of the lowest-lying eigenvalues of the staggered fermion Dirac operator are made on ensembles of equilibrium gauge field configurations in quenched SU(3) lattice gauge theory. The results are compared with exact analytical predictions in the microscopic finite-volume scaling regime.
We carry out lattice simulations of two-color QCD and spectroscopy at finite density with two flavors of rooted-staggered quarks and a diquark source term. As in a previous four-flavor study, for small values of the inverse gauge coupling we observe a Goldstone spectrum which reflects the symmetry-breaking pattern of a Gaussian symplectic chiral random-matrix ensemble (GSE) with Dyson index $β_D=4$, which corresponds to any-color QCD with adjoint quarks in the continuum instead of QC$_2$D wih fundamental quarks. We show that this unphysical behavior occurs only inside of the bulk phase of $SU(…
We calculate isospin 2 pion-pion scattering in chiral perturbation theory for a partially quenched, mixed action theory with Ginsparg-Wilson valence quarks and staggered sea quarks. We point out that for some scattering channels, the power-law volume dependence of two pion states in nonunitary theories such as partially quenched or mixed action QCD is identical to that of QCD. Thus one can extract infinite volume scattering parameters from mixed action simulations. We then determine the scattering length for both 2 and 2+1 sea quarks in the isospin limit. The scattering length, when expressed …
