Nonperturbative tests of the renormalization of mixed clover-staggered currents in lattice QCD

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 find that the renormalization of the mixed current differs from the square root of the product of the pure HISQ and pure clover currents by $2-3%$. We also compare discretization errors between the clover and HISQ formalisms.