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 quarks to demonstrate the Ward identity. We introduce a new concept of leakage patterns which collectively represent the matrix elements of the chirality operator and the shift operator sandwiched between two eigenstates of the staggered Dirac operator. The leakage pattern provides a new method to identify zero modes and non-zero modes in the Dirac eigenvalue spectrum. This method is as robust as the spectral flow method but requires much less computing power. Analysis using a machine learning technique confirms that the leakage pattern is universal, since the staggered Dirac eigenmodes on normal gauge configurations respect it. In addition, the leakage pattern can be used to determine a ratio of renormalization factors as a by-product. We conclude that it might be possible and realistic to measure the topological charge $Q$ using the Atiya-Singer index theorem and the leakage pattern of the chirality operator in the staggered fermion formalism.
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 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 calculate the next-to-leading order axial current decay constants of taste non-Goldstone pions and kaons in staggered chiral perturbation theory. This is an extension of the taste Goldstone decay constants calculation to that of the non-Goldstone tastes. We present results for the partially quenched case in the SU(3) and SU(2) staggered chiral perturbation theories and discuss the difference between the taste Goldstone and non-Goldstone cases.
We present results from a systematic perturbative investigation of taste-changing in improved staggered quarks. We show one-loop taste-changing interactions can be removed perturbatively by an effective four-quark term and calculate the necessary coefficients.
We compare several improved actions for staggered quarks. We study the effect of improvement on the taste changing interactions by calculating the splitting in the pion spectrum. We investigate the effect of the improvement on some topological properties.
We address the locality problem arising in simulations, which take the square root of the staggered fermion determinant as a Boltzmann weight to reduce the number of dynamical quark tastes from four to two. We study analytically and numerically the square root of the staggered fermion operator as a candidate to define a two taste theory from first principles. Although it has the correct weight, this operator is non-local in the continuum limit. Our work serves as a warning that fundamental properties of field theories might be violated when employing blindly the square root trick. The question…
We discuss the construction of a chiral random matrix model for staggered fermions. This model includes $O(a^2)$ corrections to the continuum limit of staggered fermions and is related to the zero momentum limit of the Lee-Sharpe Lagrangian for staggered fermions. The naive construction based on a specific expansion in lattice spacing ($a$) of the Dirac matrix produces the term which gives the dominant contribution to the observed taste splitting in the pion masses. A more careful analysis can include extra terms which are also consistent with the symmetries of staggered fermions. Lastly I wil…
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…
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…
We present a completed random matrix theory for staggered fermions which incorporates all taste symmetry breaking terms at their leading order from the staggered chiral Lagrangian. This is an extension of previous work which only included some of the taste breaking terms. We will also discuss the effects of taste symmetry breaking on the eigenvalues in the weak and strong taste breaking limits, and compare with some results from lattice simulations.
We study the impact of hypercubic (HYP) smearing on the size of taste breaking for staggered fermions, comparing to unimproved and to asqtad-improved staggered fermions. As in previous studies, we find a substantial reduction in taste-breaking compared to unimproved staggered fermions (by a factor of 4-7 on lattices with spacing $a\approx 0.1 $fm). In addition, we observe that discretization effects of next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion (${\cal O}(a^2 p^2)$) are markedly reduced by HYP smearing. Compared to asqtad valence fermions, we find that taste-breaking in the pion spectrum is…
The numerical properties of staggered Dirac operators with a taste-dependent mass term proposed by Adams [1,2] and by Hoelbling [3] are compared with those of ordinary staggered and Wilson Dirac operators. In the free limit and on (quenched) interacting configurations, we consider their topological properties, their spectrum, and the resulting pion mass. Although we also consider the spectral structure, topological properties, locality, and computational cost of an overlap operator with a staggered kernel, we call attention to the possibility of using the Adams and Hoelbling operators without …
Many results from lattice QCD of broad importance to particle and nuclear physics are obtained with 2+1 flavors of staggered sea quarks. In the continuum limit, staggered fermions yield four species, called tastes. To reduce the number of tastes to one (per flavor), the simulation employs the fourth root of the four-taste staggered fermion determinant. This talk surveys evidence in favor of this procedure, refutes recent criticisms, and reviews recent algorithmic and technical improvements. Physics results are covered in other plenary talks.
We present a random matrix theory (RMT) for the staggered lattice QCD Dirac operator. The staggered RMT is equivalent to the zero-momentum limit of the staggered chiral Lagrangian and includes all taste breaking terms at their leading order. This is an extension of previous work which only included some of the taste breaking terms. We will also present some results for the taste breaking contributions to the partition function and the Dirac eigenvalues.
The eigenvalue spectra of staggered fermions with an Adams and/or Hoelbling mass term are studied. The chiralities of the eigenmodes reflect whether the chirality linked to the unflavored approximate (γ_5 \times 1) or the flavored exact (γ_5 \times ξ_5) staggered symmetry is considered, and which one of the RR, LR, RL, LL eigenmode definitions is used. In either case a sensitivity to the topological charge of the gauge background is found. We discuss how to remove the leading cut-off effects of these actions by means of a properly tuned improvement term and/or the overlap procedure. The combin…
We study taste and Euclidean rotational symmetry violation for staggered fermions at nonzero lattice spacing using staggered chiral perturbation theory. We extend the staggered chiral Lagrangian to O(a^2 p^2), O(a^4) and O(a^2 m), the orders necessary for a full next-to-leading order calculation of pseudo-Goldstone boson masses and decay constants including analytic terms. We then calculate a number of SO(4) taste-breaking quantities, which involve only a small subset of these NLO operators. We predict relationships between SO(4) taste-breaking splittings in masses, pseudoscalar decay constant…
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…
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…
Although taste violations significantly affect the results of staggered calculations of pseudoscalar and heavy-light mesonic quantities, those entering staggered calculations of baryonic quantities have not been quantified. Here I develop staggered chiral perturbation theory in the light-quark baryon sector by mapping the Symanzik action into heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. For 2+1 dynamical quark flavors, the masses of flavor-symmetric nucleons are calculated to third order in partially quenched and fully dynamical staggered chiral perturbation theory. To this order the expansion inc…
We present results for the pion multiplet spectrum calculated using both unimproved staggered fermions and improved HYP-smeared staggered fermions. In the case of unimproved staggered fermions, we observe (consistent with previous work) that ${\cal O}(a^2)$ taste symmetry breaking effects are large and comparable to the $\approx {\cal O}(p^2)$ contributions to their masses. Higher order ${\cal O}(a^2 p^2)$ effects are also substantial enough to be seen. For HYP-smeared staggered fermions, we find that taste breaking is much reduced. The ${\cal O}(a^2)$ effects are observable, but are noticeabl…
We extend our previous study of taste-symmetry breaking using HYP-smeared staggered fermions in two ways. First, we improve the statistics of a comparison of unimproved and HYP-smeared staggered fermions on quenched lattices with $a\approx 0.1 $fm. This allows us to obtain a signal for all pion tastes, rather than just a subset, and thus to make a complete comparison. In addition, it allows us to differentiate between wall and local sources. Second, we compare HYP-smeared valence quarks to asqtad valence quarks on 2+1 flavor unquenched MILC lattices. We find that taste breaking is substantiall…
The improved staggered quark action has enabled breakthrough calculations of QCD with three light dynamical quarks. The largest remaining $a^2$ scaling violations come from "taste-changing" interactions, which are significantly reduced over naive quarks because of carefully chosen smearing of the gauge links. Here we examine further improvements to the quark action and show that additional smearing of the links can reduce the taste-changing errors by another factor of two, whilst retaining a fully $a^2$-improved action. The taste-changing errors can be understood within a perturbative calculat…
The topological susceptibility of the vacuum in quantum chromodynamics has been simulated numerically using the Asqtad improved staggered fermion formalism. At nonzero lattice spacing the residual fermion doublers (fermion ``tastes'') in the staggered fermion formalism give contributions to the susceptibility that deviate from conventional continuum chiral perturbation theory. In this brief report we estimate the taste-breaking artifact and compare it with results of recent simulations, finding that it accounts for roughly half of the scaling violation.
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…
Symmetries play a distinctive role at the high temperature phase transition in QCD. Therefore the spectrum of screening masses has been investigated with emphasis on taste breaking. Although taste violation is an UV effect the relevant operators could be temperature dependent. We have studied the meson screening masses in the temperature range between 140 MeV to 550 MeV. The computation has been performed using dynamical N_f = 2+1 gauge field configurations generated with the p4 staggered action. For temperatures below the transition an agreement with the prediction of staggered chiral perturb…
We have extended staggered chiral perturbation theory to O(a^2 p^2), O(a^4), and O(a^2 m), the orders necessary for a full next-to-leading order calculation of pseudo-Goldstone boson masses and decay constants including taste-symmetry violations. We present predictions relating SO(4) taste-breaking splittings in masses, pseudoscalar decay constants, and dispersion relations. These can be used to test the fourth-root trick.
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 present our results on meson and nucleon screening masses in finite temperature two flavour QCD using smeared staggered valence quarks and staggered thin-link sea quarks with different lattice spacings and quark masses. We investigate optimization of smearing by observing its effects on the infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) components of gluon and quark fields. The application of smearing to screening at finite temperature also provides a transparent window into the mechanism of the interplay of smearing and chiral symmetry. The improved hadronic operators show that above the finite temper…
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…
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…
Using the Sigma model to explore the lowest order pseudo-scalar spectrum with SU(3) breaking, this talk considers an additional exact "taste" symmetry to mimic species doubling. Rooting replicas of a valid approach such as Wilson fermions reproduces the desired physical spectrum. In contrast, extra symmetries of the rooted staggered approach leave spurious states and a flavor dependent taste multiplicity.
We investigate the properties of staggered-fermion lattice QCD in which the fourth root of the fermion determinant is taken. We show that this theory is non-local at non-zero lattice spacing $a$, and that the non-locality is caused by the breaking of taste symmetry at $a\ne 0$. We then present a renormalization-group based argument that the theory restores taste symmetry in the continuum limit. As a consequence the theory is local in that limit, and falls into the correct universality class. Finally, we argue that the correct effective theory for the physics of Goldstone bosons at $a\ne 0$ is …
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…
The breaking of the taste symmetry is studied in the temperature range between 140 MeV to 550 MeV. In order to investigate this violation we have calculated the screening masses of the various taste states fitting the exponential decay of the spatial correlators. The computation has been performed using dynamical Nf = 2+1 gauge field configurations generated with the p4 staggered action along the Line of Constant Physics (LCP) defined by a pion mass $m_π$ of approximately 220 MeV and the kaon mass $m_K$ equals 500 MeV. For temperatures below the transition an agreement with the predictions of …
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.
I explore the origins of the unphysical predictions from rooted staggered fermion algorithms. Before rooting, the exact chiral symmetry of staggered fermions is a flavored symmetry among the four "tastes." The rooting procedure averages over tastes of different chiralities. This averaging forbids the appearance of the correct 't Hooft vertex for the target theory.
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 …
Lattice QCD calculations with different staggered valence and sea quarks can be used to improve determinations of quark masses, Gasser-Leutwyler couplings, and other parameters relevant to phenomenology. We calculate the masses and decay constants of flavored pions and kaons through next-to-leading order in staggered-valence, staggered-sea mixed-action chiral perturbation theory. We present the results in the valence-valence and valence-sea sectors, for all tastes. As in unmixed theories, the taste-pseudoscalar, valence-valence mesons are exact Goldstone bosons in the chiral limit, at non-zero…
We compute chiral logarithms in the presence of "taste" symmetry breaking of staggered fermions. The lagrangian of Lee and Sharpe is generalized and then used to calculate the logs in $π$ and $K$ masses. We correct an error in Ref. [1] [C. Bernard, hep-lat/0111051]; the issue turns out to have implications for the comparison with simulations, even at tree level. MILC data with three light dynamical flavors can be well fit by our formulas. However, two new chiral parameters, which describe order $a^2$ hairpin diagrams for taste-nonsinglet mesons, enter in the fits. To obtain precise results for…
We demonstrate that the O(a) taste mixing exhibited in standard textbook presentations of staggered quarks is an artifact of the particular definition of the flavor fields in those presentations, and has nothing to do with the underlying precision of staggered-quark actions, despite continuing comments to the contrary in the current literature. To illustrate this point we introduce a new coordinate-space definition of the flavor fields that suppresses the O(a) term by two additional powers of a. In fact there are no errors at all from this mechanism. The only source of taste mixing comes from …
We use perturbative Symanzik improvement to create a new staggered-quark action (HISQ) that has greatly reduced one-loop taste-exchange errors, no tree-level order a^2 errors, and no tree-level order (am)^4 errors to leading order in the quark's velocity v/c. We demonstrate with simulations that the resulting action has taste-exchange interactions that are at least 3--4 times smaller than the widely used ASQTAD action. We show how to estimate errors due to taste exchange by comparing ASQTAD and HISQ simulations, and demonstrate with simulations that such errors are no more than 1% when HISQ is…
We determine the masses and magnetic moments of the octet baryons in chiral perturbation theory formulated for a mixed lattice action of Ginsparg-Wilson valence quarks and staggered sea quarks. Taste-symmetry breaking does not occur at next-to-leading order in the combined lattice-spacing and chiral expansion. Expressions derived for masses and magnetic moments are required for addressing lattice artifacts in mixed-action simulations of these observables.
We study the behavior of the isovector scalar correlator, which is particularly sensitive to lattice artifacts, using domain-wall valence quarks on a staggered sea (generated by the MILC collaboration). We analyze this according to the prediction from chiral perturbation theory determined by Prelovsek, which indicates that the leading unitarity violations come from taste breaking effects. We show that our data behaves in the way predicted by Prelovsek, thus verifying that the largest contribution to the violations of unitarity which arise at finite lattice spacing can be described by the mixed…
An unquenched calculation of the form factor for $B\to D^* l ν$ is needed to improve the determination of $|V_{cb}|$. The MILC lattices, computed with a 2+1 improved staggered action for the light quarks, are well suited to this purpose. The relevant staggered chiral perturbation theory (SChPT) must be known in order to correctly account for the "taste" breaking discretization effects associated with the staggered quarks to NLO in $1/ m_{D^*}$. This SChPT calculation is presented.
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 calculate the kaon B-parameter, B_K, in chiral perturbation theory for a partially quenched, mixed action theory with Ginsparg-Wilson valence quarks and staggered sea quarks. We find that the resulting expression is similar to that in the continuum, and in fact has only two additional unknown parameters. At one-loop order, taste-symmetry violations in the staggered sea sector only contribute to flavor-disconnected diagrams by generating an O(a^2) shift to the masses of taste-singlet sea-sea mesons. Lattice discretization errors also give rise to an analytic term which shifts the tree-level …
To obtain a light mode in two-dimensional staggered fermions, we introduce four new local operators keeping the rotational invariance for a staggered Dirac operator. To split masses of tastes, three cases are considered. The mass matrix and the propagator for free theories are analyzed. We find that one of three cases is a good candidate for taking a single mode by the mass splitting. In the case, it is possible that a heavy mode obtains infinite mass on even sites or odd sites.
Staggered chiral perturbation theory (schpt) takes into account the "fourth-root trick" for reducing unwanted (taste) degrees of freedom with staggered quarks by multiplying the contribution of each sea quark loop by a factor of 1/4. In the special case of four staggered fields (four flavors, nF=4), I show here that certain assumptions about analyticity and phase structure imply the validity of this procedure for representing the rooting trick in the chiral sector. I start from the observation that, when the four flavors are degenerate, the fourth root simply reduces nF=4 to nF=1. One can then…
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 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…
