Unexpected Results in the Chiral Limit with Staggered Fermions

Abstract

A cluster algorithm is constructed and applied to study the chiral limit of the strongly coupled lattice Schwinger model involving staggered fermions. The algorithm is based on a novel loop representation of the model. Finite size scaling of the chiral susceptibility based on data from lattices of size up to $64\times 64$ indicates the absence of long range correlations at strong couplings. Assuming that there is no phase transition at a weaker coupling, the results imply that all mesons acquire a mass at non-zero lattice spacings. Although this does not violate any known physics, it is surprising since typically one expects a single pion to remain massless at non-zero lattice spacings in the staggered fermion formulation.

6 pages, 6 figures, espcrc2.sty format (Misprint in the caption of Figure 5 corrected)

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• Meron-Cluster Solution of Fermion Sign Problems
• The lattice Schwinger model as a discrete sum of filled Wilson loops
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Approaches to the sign problem in lattice field theory
• Chiral Limit of Strongly Coupled Lattice Gauge Theories
• Simulation strategies for the massless lattice Schwinger model in the dual formulation
• Dual simulation of the massless lattice Schwinger model with topological term and non-zero chemical potential
• Chiral Limit of Staggered Fermions at Strong Couplings: A Loop Representation