Lattice QCD on Small Computers

TL;DR

This paper shows that lattice QCD calculations can be significantly accelerated using coarse lattices and improved actions, enabling accurate results on small computers that match experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a method to perform lattice QCD calculations faster on small computers by using coarse lattices and perturbatively-improved actions with tadpole corrections.

Findings

Calculations are 10^3 to 10^6 times faster.

Results for static-quark potential and charmonium spectrum are accurate and lattice-spacing independent.

Computed results agree well with experimental data.

Abstract

We demonstrate that lattice QCD calculations can be made $10^3$--$10^6$ times faster by using very coarse lattices. To obtain accurate results, we replace the standard lattice actions by perturbatively-improved actions with tadpole-improved correction terms that remove the leading errors due to the lattice. To illustrate the power of this approach, we calculate the static-quark potential, and the charmonium spectrum and wavefunctions using a desktop computer. We obtain accurate results that are independent of the lattice spacing and agree well with experiment.