No Arabic abstract
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.
We present results of our ongoing determination of string breaking in full QCD with N_f=2 Wilson fermions. Our investigation of the fission of the static quark-antiquark string into a static-light meson-antimeson system is based on dynamical configurations of size 24^3 x 40 produced by the TxL collaboration. Combining various optimization methods we determine the matrix elements of the two-by-two system with so far unprecedented accuracy. The all-to-all light quark propagators occurring in the transition element are computed from eigenmodes of the Hermitian Wilson-Dirac matrix complemented by stochastic estimates in the orthogonal subspace. We observe a clear signature for level-splitting between ground state and excited potential. Thus, for the first time, string breaking induced by sea quarks is observed in a simulation of 4-dimensional lattice-QCD.
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.
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 investigate the string breaking mechanism in n_f=2 QCD. We discuss the lattice techniques used and present results on energy levels and mixing angle of the static BBbar|QbarQ two-state system. The string breaking is visualized, by means of an animation of the action density distribution as a function of the static colour source-antisource separation.
The separation of a heavy quark and antiquark pair leads to the formation of a tube of flux, or string, which should break in the presence of light quark-antiquark pairs. This expected zero temperature phenomenon has proven elusive in simulations of lattice QCD. We present simulation results that show that the string does break in the confining phase at nonzero temperature.