Flavor Symmetry and the Static Potential with Hypercubic Blocking

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new hypercubic (HYP) smearing technique for gauge links in lattice QCD, significantly improving flavor symmetry and reducing statistical errors in static potential measurements.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel HYP smearing method that enhances flavor symmetry and measurement accuracy in lattice QCD simulations.

Findings

HYP smearing improves flavor symmetry by an order of magnitude.

HYP static potential matches thin link potential at larger distances.

Reduced statistical errors in potential measurements with HYP smearing.

Abstract

We introduce a new smearing transformation, the hypercubic (HYP) fat link. The hypercubic fat link mixes gauge links within hypercubes attached to the original link only. Using quenched lattices at beta = 5.7 and 6.0 we show that HYP fat links improve flavor symmetry by an order of magnitude relative to the thin link staggered action. The static potential measured on HYP smeared lattices agrees with the thin link potential at distances r/a >= 2 and has greatly reduced statistical errors. These quenched results will be used in forthcoming dynamical simulations of HYP staggered fermions.