An Improved Single-Plaquette Gauge Action

Abstract

We describe and test a nonperturbatively improved single-plaquette lattice action for 4-d SU(2) and SU(3) pure gauge theory, which suppresses large fluctuations of the plaquette, without requiring the naive continuum limit for smooth fields. We tune the action parameters based on torelon masses in moderate cubic physical volumes, and investigate the size of cut-off effects in other physical quantities, including torelon masses in asymmetric spatial volumes, the static quark potential, and gradient flow observables. In 2-d O(N) models similarly constructed nearest-neighbor actions have led to a drastic reduction of cut-off effects, down to the permille level, in a wide variety of physical quantities. In the gauge theories, we find significant reduction of lattice artifacts, and for some observables, the coarsest lattice result is very close to the continuum value. We estimate an improvement factor of 40 compared to using the Wilson gauge action to achieve the same statistical accuracy and suppression of cut-off effects. The simplicity of the gauge action makes it amenable for dynamical fermion simulations.

22 pages, 16 figures; added numerical comparison with fundamental-adjoint action, added references and comments

References in corpus (9)

• Perturbative analysis of the gradient flow in non-abelian gauge theories
• High-precision scale setting in lattice QCD
• Search for the decay $B_s^0\to {\overline{D}}^0{f}_0(980)$
• The puzzle of apparent linear lattice artifacts in the 2d non-linear sigma-model and Symanzik's solution
• Topological Lattice Actions
• Logarithmic corrections to O(a^2) lattice artifacts
• Walking near a Conformal Fixed Point: the 2-d O(3) Model at theta near pi as a Test Case
• Non-trivial θ-Vacuum Effects in the 2-d O(3) Model
• Drastic Reduction of Cutoff Effects in 2-d Lattice O(N) Models

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Proof of the renormalizability of the gradient flow
• Interpreting Numerical Measurements in Fixed Topological Sectors
• Non-abelian lattice gauge theory with a topological action
• Aspects of topological actions on the lattice
• Modified Abelian and SU(2) Wilson theories on a lattice from a non-compact regularization