Topology in high-$T$ QCD via staggered spectral projectors

TL;DR

This paper compares lattice QCD calculations of topological susceptibility at high temperature using spectral projectors on staggered fermion eigenmodes with traditional gluonic methods, aiming to reduce lattice artifacts.

Contribution

It introduces a spectral projector approach for topological susceptibility in high-$T$ QCD and compares it with standard gluonic definitions to address lattice artifacts.

Findings

Spectral projectors reduce lattice artifacts at high temperature.

Preliminary results show consistency between spectral and gluonic methods.

Spectral discretization improves continuum scaling in high-$T$ QCD.

Abstract

We present preliminary lattice results for the topological susceptibility in high-$T$ $N_f=2+1$ QCD obtained discretizing this observable via spectral projectors on eigenmodes of the staggered operator, and we compare them with those obtained with the standard gluonic definition. The adoption of the spectral discretization is motivated by the large lattice artifacts affecting the continuum scaling of the gluonic susceptibility at high $T$, related to the choice of non-chiral fermions in the action.