Smearing Center Vortices

TL;DR

This paper introduces a smearing technique for Z(2) center vortices in lattice gauge configurations, enabling the recovery of thick vortices with full SU(2) information and compatibility with chiral fermions.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel smearing method that preserves vortex structures while restoring smoothness for fermionic calculations in lattice gauge theory.

Findings

Smeared vortices match full SU(2) configurations in gluonic observables.

The method improves compatibility of Z(2) vortices with overlap fermions.

Good agreement observed between smeared and full gauge configurations.

Abstract

We smear Z(2) center vortices in lattice gauge configurations such as to recover thick vortices with full SU(2) Yang-Mills information. In particular, we address the problem that using Z(2) configurations in conjunction with overlap (or chirally improved) fermions is problematic due to their lack of smoothness. Our method allows us to regain this smoothness and simultaneously maintain the center vortex structure. We verify our method with various gluonic and fermionic observables and find good agreement between smeared vortex configurations and full SU(2).