Analytic Smearing of SU(3) Link Variables in Lattice QCD

TL;DR

This paper introduces an analytic smearing method for SU(3) link variables in lattice QCD, enabling differentiable smearing suitable for modern Monte Carlo algorithms, and demonstrates its effectiveness without loss of performance.

Contribution

It presents a novel analytic smearing technique that is differentiable, allowing integration with molecular dynamics-based Monte Carlo methods in lattice QCD simulations.

Findings

Smeared mean plaquette results comparable to existing methods

Static quark-antiquark potential unaffected by the new smearing

Increased sensitivity to the smearing parameter observed

Abstract

An analytic method of smearing link variables in lattice QCD is proposed and tested. The differentiability of the smearing scheme with respect to the link variables permits the use of modern Monte Carlo updating methods based on molecular dynamics evolution for gauge-field actions constructed using such smeared links. In examining the smeared mean plaquette and the static quark-antiquark potential, no degradation in effectiveness is observed as compared to link smearing methods currently in use, although an increased sensitivity to the smearing parameter is found.