Scaling analysis of FLIC fermion actions

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the FLIC fermion action, demonstrating that a standard 1-loop clover term effectively removes $O(a)$ errors, simplifying dynamical QCD simulations.

Contribution

It shows that the mean field improved 1-loop clover coefficient suffices for error removal, eliminating the need for non-perturbative tuning in FLIC fermions.

Findings

Standard 1-loop clover coefficient removes $O(a)$ errors.

Smearing in FLIC allows for highly improved field strength tensors.

Efficient dynamical simulations are enabled without non-perturbative tuning.

Abstract

The Fat Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) fermion action is a variant of the $O(a)$-improved Wilson action where the irrelevant operators are constructed using smeared links. While the use of such smearing allows for the use of highly improved definitions of the field strength tensor $F_{\mu\nu},$ we show that the standard 1-loop clover term with a mean field improved coefficient $c_{\rm sw}$ is sufficient to remove the $O(a)$ errors, avoiding the need for non-perturbative tuning. This result enables efficient dynamical simulations in QCD with the FLIC fermion action.