Suppressing dislocations in normalized hypercubic smearing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new action to suppress dislocations caused by normalized hypercubic smearing in lattice QCD, leading to more stable simulations and better chiral fermion properties.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel action that reduces dislocations in normalized hypercubic smearing, enhancing the stability and efficiency of lattice QCD simulations.

Findings

Reduced spikes in fermion force during simulations

Improved hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm performance

Enhanced properties of valence chiral fermions

Abstract

Normalized hypercubic smearing improves the behavior of dynamical Wilson-clover fermions, but has the unwanted side effect that it can occasionally produce spikes in the fermion force. These spikes originate in the chain rule connecting the derivative with respect to the smeared links to the derivative with respect to the dynamical links, and are associated with the presence of dislocations in the dynamical gauge field. We propose and study an action designed to suppress these dislocations. We present evidence for improved performance of the hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm. A side benefit is improvement in the properties of valence chiral fermions.