An alternate smearing method for Wilson loops in lattice QCD

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new smearing technique using unitarized fat7 links in lattice QCD, which effectively reduces statistical noise in Wilson loop calculations without affecting long-distance quark interactions.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel smearing method for Wilson loops in lattice QCD that improves statistical accuracy while preserving physical long-distance effects.

Findings

Significant reduction in statistical fluctuations for large Wilson loops

Decreased self-interactions of static sources with the new smearing method

Long-distance inter-quark effects remain unchanged

Abstract

A gauge field link smearing method developed for calculations with staggered fermions, namely the use of unitarized fat7 links, is applied to mesonic and baryonic Wilson loop calculations. This method is found to be very effective for reducing statistical fluctuations for large Wilson loops. Examination of chromo-electric field distributions shows that self-interactions of the static sources are reduced when unitarized fat7 smearing is used but long-distance inter-quark effects are unchanged.