Free Meson Spectral Functions on the Lattice

TL;DR

This paper analytically calculates free-field thermal meson spectral functions on the lattice, compares different fermion formulations, and introduces a new spectral function calculation using extended quark sources.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of lattice fermion formulations for meson spectral functions and introduces a novel calculation method with extended quark sources.

Findings

Spectral functions vary across fermion formulations.

Extended quark sources improve spectral function calculations.

Results serve as benchmarks for in-medium hadron studies.

Abstract

We present results from an analytic calculation of thermal meson spectral functions in the infinite temperature (free field) limit. We compare spectral functions for various lattice fermion formulations used at present in studies of in-medium properties of hadrons based on the maximum entropy method (MEM). In particular, we will present a new calculation of spectral functions performed with extended quark sources.