Comment on "Chiral anomalies and rooted staggered fermions"

Abstract

In hep-lat/0701018, Creutz claims that the rooting trick used in simulations of staggered fermions to reduce the number of tastes misses key physics whenever the desired theory has an odd number of continuum flavors, and uses this argument to call into question the rooting trick in general. Here we show that his argument fails as the continuum limit is approached, and therefore does not imply any problem for staggered simulations. We also show that the cancellations necessary to restore unitarity in physical correlators in the continuum limit are a straightforward consequence of the restoration of taste symmetry.

11 pages, version 3 (4/13/07): Revisions to correspond to Creutz's latest posting, including a change in the title. Version to appear in Physics Letters B

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• Highly Improved Staggered Quarks on the Lattice, with Applications to Charm Physics
• Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory and the Fourth-Root Trick
• Observations on staggered fermions at non-zero lattice spacing
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