The chiral condensate on 2-flavor staggered configurations from an overlap operator

TL;DR

This study compares low-lying eigenmodes of overlap and staggered Dirac operators on 2-flavor configurations to assess how well staggered lattices replicate continuum QCD, using Random Matrix Theory as a benchmark.

Contribution

It introduces a method to evaluate staggered lattice artifacts by comparing eigenmode distributions to RMT predictions and identifies the optimal overlap valence mass for matching staggered sea quarks.

Findings

Eigenmode distributions agree with RMT predictions.

Staggered configurations exhibit lattice artifacts comparable to overlap configurations.

Predicted infinite volume 2-flavor chiral condensate.

Abstract

We measure the low lying eigenmodes of an overlap Dirac operator on 2--flavor staggered configurations. By comparing the eigenmode distribution to the predictions of Random Matrix Theory we test to what accuracy staggered configurations describe continuum QCD. The agreement between the numerical data and RMT implies that at our quark mass values the lattice artifacts of the staggered configurations are comparable to overlap configurations. We identify the overlap valence mass that best matches the staggered sea quarks and predict the value of the infinite volume 2-flavor chiral condensate.