Determination of the Static Potential with Dynamical Fermions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a refined method using HYP smearing to accurately extract the static quark-antiquark potential from Wilson loops in dynamical fermion configurations, improving noise reduction and continuum limit understanding.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel technique for potential extraction that enhances signal quality and provides precise non-perturbative results, including scale setting and potential shape analysis.

Findings

Noise-to-signal ratio improved by exponential factor

Small cut-off effects observed in the potential

Potential results agree with phenomenological models

Abstract

We present in detail a technique to extract the potential between a static quark and anti-quark pair from Wilson loops measured on dynamical configurations. This technique is based on HYP smearing and leads to an exponential improvement of the noise-to-signal ratio of Wilson loops. We explain why the correct continuum potential is obtained and show numerical evidence that the cut-off effects are small. We present precise results for the non-perturbative potential. As applications, we determine the scale r_0/a and study the shape of the static potential in the range of distances around r_0, where it can be compared with phenomenological potential models.