The Yang-Mills gradient flow and renormalization

In this proceedings contribution we will review the main ideas behind the many recent works that apply the gradient flow to the determination of the renormalized coupling and the renormalization of composite operators. We will pay special attention to the continuum extrapolation of flow quantities.Comment: 17 pages. Proceedings of the 32nd International Symposium on Lattice Field Theor

(Dimensional) twisted reduction in large N gauge theories

We show that the spontaneous breaking of center symmetry can be avoided on a $L^2\times 1^2$ lattice with the appropriate choice of twisted boundary conditions. In order for this to work it is crucial that the twisted boundary conditions are chosen in the reduced plane. This suggests that the choice of twist tensor can influence the directions in which color and space degrees of freedom become indistinguishable. We also present some preliminary quantitative data comparing the value of the plaquette for different forms of reduction.Comment: Proceedings of the 33rd International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory. References update

The Yang-Mills gradient flow and SU(3) gauge theory with 12 massless fundamental fermions in a colour-twisted box

We perform the step-scaling investigation of the running coupling constant, using the gradient-flow scheme, in SU(3) gauge theory with twelve massless fermions in the fundamental representation. The Wilson plaquette gauge action and massless unimproved staggered fermions are used in the simulations. Our lattice data are prepared at high accuracy, such that the statistical error for the renormalised coupling, g_GF, is at the subpercentage level. To investigate the reliability of the continuum extrapolation, we employ two different lattice discretisations to obtain g_GF. For our simulation setting, the corresponding gauge-field averaging radius in the gradient flow has to be almost half of the lattice size, in order to have this extrapolation under control. We can determine the renormalisation group evolution of the coupling up to g^2_GF ~ 6, before the onset of the bulk phase structure. In this infrared regime, the running of the coupling is significantly slower than the two-loop perturbative prediction, although we cannot draw definite conclusion regarding possible infrared conformality of this theory. Furthermore, we comment on the issue regarding the continuum extrapolation near an infrared fixed point. In addition to adopting the fit ansatz a'la Symanzik for performing this task, we discuss a possible alternative procedure inspired by properties derived from low-energy scale invariance at strong coupling. Based on this procedure, we propose a finite-size scaling method for the renormalised coupling as a means to search for infrared fixed point. Using this method, it can be shown that the behaviour of the theory around g^2_GF ~ 6 is still not governed by possible infrared conformality.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures; Published version; Appendix A added for tabulating data; One reference included; Typos correcte

Automatic differentiation for error analysis of Monte Carlo data

Automatic Differentiation (AD) allows to determine exactly the Taylor series of any function truncated at any order. Here we propose to use AD techniques for Monte Carlo data analysis. We discuss how to estimate errors of a general function of measured observables in different Monte Carlo simulations. Our proposal combines the $\Gamma$-method with Automatic differentiation, allowing exact error propagation in arbitrary observables, even those defined via iterative algorithms. The case of special interest where we estimate the error in fit parameters is discussed in detail. We also present a freely available fortran reference implementation of the ideas discussed in this work.Comment: LaTeX, 25 pags. More explicit notation. Software available in https://gitlab.ift.uam-csic.es/alberto/aderror

Che Guevara: Hero or Villain?

This integrated unit covers the life and political ideology of the revolutionary Che Guevara. This unit is intended for B2 CEFR ESL or EFL college students. By engaging in this unit, students will enhance their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in English. Students will be engaged and challenged to think critically about current political issues and how to become more responsible global citizens