Cooling, smearing and Dirac eigenmodes - A comparison of filtering methods in lattice gauge theory

TL;DR

This paper compares cooling and smearing filtering methods in lattice gauge theory by analyzing their effects on the Dirac eigenmodes, finding that both methods produce similar results and preserve long-range structures.

Contribution

It provides a systematic comparison of cooling and smearing in lattice gauge theory, showing their similar impact on the Dirac spectrum and long-range gauge field structures.

Findings

Cooling and smearing yield similar eigenmode spectra.

Characteristic properties of the eigensystem remain invariant.

Long-range structures are preserved by both methods.

Abstract

Starting from thermalized quenched SU(2) configurations we apply cooling or iterated smearing, respectively, to produce sequences of gauge configurations with less and less fluctuations. We compute the low lying spectrum and eigenmodes of the lattice Dirac operator and compare them for the two types of smoothing. Many characteristic properties of the eigensystem remain invariant for all configurations in our sequences. We also find that cooling and smearing produce surprisingly similar results. Both observations could be indications that the two filtering methods do not drastically alter the long range structures in the gauge field.