Impact of stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how stout-link smearing affects lattice fermion actions, showing significant impact on heavy quarks and minimal effects on moderate and light quarks, influencing mass and renormalization functions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of stout-link smearing effects on the overlap quark propagator across various quark masses, highlighting mass-dependent impacts.

Findings

Heavy quark propagator is strongly affected by smearing.

Moderate quark masses show negligible effects from smearing.

Light quark masses exhibit suppressed dynamical mass generation due to smearing.

Abstract

The impact of stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions is examined through the consideration of the mass and renormalization functions of the overlap quark propagator over a variety of smeared configurations. Up to six sweeps of stout-link smearing are investigated. For heavy quark masses, the quark propagator is strongly affected by the smearing procedure. For moderate masses, the effect appears to be negligible. A small effect is seen for light quark masses, where dynamical mass generation is suppressed through the smearing procedure.