We investigate numerically the spectral flow introduced by Adams for the staggered Dirac operator on realistic gauge configurations. We study both the unimproved and the HISQ Dirac operators. We compare the spectral flow index with the index obtained by identifying low-lying modes of large chirality.
We investigate numerically the spectral flow introduced by Adams for the staggered Dirac operator on realistic (quenched) gauge configurations. We obtain clear numerical evidence that the definition works as expected: there is a clear separation betw
een crossings near and far away from the origin, and the topological charge defined through the crossings near the origin agrees, for most configurations, with the one defined through the near-zero modes of large taste-singlet chirality of the staggered Dirac operator. The crossings are much closer to the origin if we improve the Dirac operator used in the definition, and they move towards the origin as we decrease the lattice spacing.
A way to identify the would-be zero-modes of staggered lattice fermions away from the continuum limit is presented. Our approach also identifies the chiralities of these modes, and their index is seen to be determined by gauge field topology in accor
dance with the Index Theorem. The key idea is to consider the spectral flow of a certain hermitian version of the staggered Dirac operator. The staggered fermion index thus obtained can be used as a new way to assign the topological charge of lattice gauge fields. In a numerical study in U(1) backgrounds in 2 dimensions it is found to perform as well as the Wilson index while being computationally more efficient. It can also be expressed as the index of an overlap Dirac operator with a new staggered fermion kernel.
We study various improved staggered quark Dirac operators on quenched gluon backgrounds in lattice QCD. We find a clear separation of the spectrum of eigenvalues into high chirality, would-be zero modes and others, in accordance with the Index Theore
m. We find the expected clustering of the non-zero modes into quartets as we approach the continuum limit. The predictions of random matrix theory for the epsilon regime are well reproduced. We conclude that improved staggered quarks near the continuum limit respond correctly to QCD topology.
We present a theoretical foundation for the Index theorem in naive and minimally doubled lattice fermions by studying the spectral flow of a Hermitean version of Dirac operators. We utilize the point splitting method to implement flavored mass terms,
which play an important role in constructing proper Hermitean operators. We show the spectral flow correctly detects the index of the would-be zero modes which is determined by gauge field topology. Using the flavored mass terms, we present new types of overlap fermions from the naive fermion kernels, with a number of flavors that depends on the choice of the mass terms. We succeed to obtain a single-flavor naive overlap fermion which maintains hypercubic symmetry.
The variational method is used widely for determining eigenstates of the QCD hamiltonian for actions with a conventional transfer matrix, e.g., actions with improved Wilson fermions. An alternative lattice fermion formalism, staggered fermions, does
not have a conventional single-time-step transfer matrix. Nonetheless, with a simple modification, the variational method can also be applied to that formalism. In some cases the method also provides a mechanism for separating the commonly paired parity-partner states. We discuss the extension to staggered fermions and illustrate it by applying it to the calculation of the spectrum of charmed-antistrange mesons consisting of a clover charm quark and a staggered strange antiquark.