No Arabic abstract
We consider recent progress in algorithms for generating gauge field configurations that include the dynamical effects of light fermions. We survey what has been achieved in recent state-of-the-art computations, and examine the trade-offs between performance and control of systematic errors. We briefly review the use of polynomial and rational approximations in Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithms, and some of the theory of on-shell chiral fermions on the lattice. This provides a theoretical framework within which we compare algorithmic alternatives for their implementation; and again we examine the trade-offs between speed and error control.
This is the write-up of three lectures on algorithms for dynamical fermions that were given at the ILFTN workshop Perspectives in Lattice QCD in Nara during November 2005. The first lecture is on the fundamentals of Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods and introduces the Hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm and symplectic integrators; the second lecture covers topics in approximation theory and thereby introduces the Rational Hybrid Monte Carlo (RHMC) algorithm and ways of evading integrator instabilities by means of multiple pseudofermion fields; the third lecture introduces on-shell chiral (Ginsparg-Wilson) lattice fermions and discusses five-dimensional formulations for computing fermion propagators for such fermions.
As computing resources are limited, choosing the parameters for a full Lattice QCD simulation always amounts to a compromise between the competing objectives of a lattice spacing as small, quarks as light, and a volume as large as possible. Aiming to push unquenched simulations with the Wilson action towards the computationally expensive regime of small quark masses we address the question whether one can possibly save computing time by extrapolating results from small lattices to the infinite volume, prior to the usual chiral and continuum extrapolations. In the present work the systematic volume dependence of simulated pion and nucleon masses is investigated and compared with a long-standing analytic formula by Luescher and with results from Chiral Perturbation Theory. We analyze data from Hybrid Monte Carlo simulations with the standard (unimproved) two-flavor Wilson action at two different lattice spacings of a=0.08fm and 0.13fm. The quark masses considered correspond to approximately 85 and 50% (at the smaller a) and 36% (at the larger a) of the strange quark mass. At each quark mass we study at least three different lattices with L/a=10 to 24 sites in the spatial directions (L=0.85-2.08fm).
We study the deconfinement transition in two-flavour lattice QCD with dynamical overlap fermions. Our simulations have been carried out on a $16^3 times 6$ lattice at a pion mass around 500 MeV with a special HMC algorithm without any approximation such as fixed topology. We consider several temperatures from 220 MeV which is close to the deconfinement to 280 MeV which is above it. The dependence of the Polyakov loop, the chiral condensate, the Dirac spectra and the connected part of chiral susceptibility on the inverse gauge coupling has been studied. Our data indicates that the transition point lies between $beta = 7.6$ and $beta = 8.1$, but a more precise determination is not possible with our present statistics.
We study QCD thermodynamics using two flavors of dynamical overlap fermions with quark masses corresponding to a pion mass of 350 MeV. We determine several observables on N_t=6 and 8 lattices. All our runs are performed with fixed global topology. Our results are compared with staggered ones and a nice agreement is found.
The first observation is made of hadronic string breaking due to dynamical fermions in zero temperature lattice QCD. The simulations are done for SU(2) color in three dimensions, with two flavors of staggered fermions. The results have clear implications for the large scale simulations that are being done to search (so far, without success) for string breaking in four-dimensional QCD. In particular, string breaking is readily observed using only Wilson loops to excite a static quark-antiquark pair. Improved actions on coarse lattices are used, providing an extremely efficient means to access the quark separations and propagation times at which string breaking occurs.