The overlap lattice Dirac operator and dynamical fermions

I show how to avoid a two level nested conjugate gradient procedure in the context of Hybrid Monte Carlo with the overlap fermionic action. The resulting procedure is quite similar to Hybrid Monte Carlo with domain wall fermions, but is more flexible and therefore has some potential worth exploring.Comment: Further expanded version. 12 pages, plain Te

Noncompact chiral U(1) gauge theories on the lattice

A new, adiabatic phase choice is adopted for the overlap in the case of an infinite volume, noncompact abelian chiral gauge theory. This gauge choice obeys the same symmetries as the Brillouin-Wigner (BW) phase choice, and, in addition, produces a Wess-Zumino functional that is linear in the gauge variables on the lattice. As a result, there are no gauge violations on the trivial orbit in all theories, consistent and covariant anomalies are simply related and Berry's curvature now appears as a Schwinger term. The adiabatic phase choice can be further improved to produce a perfect phase choice, with a lattice Wess-Zumino functional that is just as simple as the one in continuum. When perturbative anomalies cancel, gauge invariance in the fermionic sector is fully restored. The lattice effective action describing an anomalous abelian gauge theory has an explicit form, close to one analyzed in the past in a perturbative continuum framework.Comment: 35 pages, one figure, plain TeX; minor typos corrected; to appear in PR

Remark on lattice BRST invariance

A recently claimed resolution to the lattice Gribov problem in the context of chiral lattice gauge theories is examined. Unfortunately, I find that the old problem remains.Comment: 4 pages, plain TeX, presentation improved (see acknowledgments

The Fermion Doubling Problem and Noncommutative Geometry

We propose a resolution for the fermion doubling problem in discrete field theories based on the fuzzy sphere and its Cartesian products.Comment: 12 pages Latex2e, no figures, typo

An alternative to domain wall fermions

We define a sparse hermitian lattice Dirac matrix, $H$, coupling $2n+1$ Dirac fermions. When $2n$ fermions are integrated out the induced action for the last fermion is a rational approximation to the hermitian overlap Dirac operator. We provide rigorous bounds on the condition number of $H$ and compare them to bounds for the higher dimensional Dirac operator of domain wall fermions. Our main conclusion is that overlap fermions should be taken seriously as a practical alternative to domain wall fermions in the context of numerical QCD.Comment: Revtex Latex, 26 pages, 1 figure, a few minor change

Domain Wall Fermions with Exact Chiral Symmetry

We show how the standard domain wall action can be simply modified to allow arbitrarily exact chiral symmetry at finite fifth dimensional extent. We note that the method can be used for both quenched and dynamical calculations. We test the method using smooth and thermalized gauge field configurations. We also make comparisons of the performance (cost) of the domain wall operator for spectroscopy compared to other methods such as the overlap-Dirac operator and find both methods are comparable in cost.Comment: revtex, 37 pages, 11 color postscript figure

Nonperturbative Gauge Fixing and Perturbation Theory

We compare the gauge-fixing approach proposed by Jona-Lasinio and Parrinello, and by Zwanziger (JPLZ) with the standard Fadeev-Popov procedure, and demonstrate perturbative equality of gauge-invariant quantities, up to irrelevant terms induced by the cutoff. We also show how a set of local, renormalizable Feynman rules can be constructed for the JPLZ procedure.Comment: 9 pages, latex, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Ginsparg-Wilson-Luscher Symmetry and Ultralocality

Important recent discoveries suggest that Ginsparg-Wilson-Luscher (GWL) symmetry has analogous dynamical consequences for the theory on the lattice as chiral symmetry does in the continuum. While it is well known that inherent property of lattice chiral symmetry is fermion doubling, we show here that inherent property of GWL symmetry is that the infinitesimal symmetry transformation couples fermionic degrees of freedom at arbitrarily large lattice distances (non-ultralocality). The consequences of this result for ultralocality of symmetric actions are discussed.Comment: 18 pages, LATEX. For clarity changed to infinitesimal transformations, typos corrected, explicit hypothesis adde

Chiral perturbation theory at O(a^2) for lattice QCD

We construct the chiral effective Lagrangian for two lattice theories: one with Wilson fermions and the other with Wilson sea fermions and Ginsparg-Wilson valence fermions. For each of these theories we construct the Symanzik action through order $a^2$. The chiral Lagrangian is then derived, including terms of order $a^2$, which have not been calculated before. We find that there are only few new terms at this order. Corrections to existing coefficients in the continuum chiral Lagrangian are proportional to $a^2$, and appear in the Lagrangian at order $a^2 p^2$ or higher. Similarly, O(4) symmetry breaking terms enter the Symanzik action at order $a^2$, but contribute to the chiral Lagrangian at order $a^2 p^4$ or higher. We calculate the light meson masses in chiral perturbation theory for both lattice theories. At next-to-leading order, we find that there are no order $a^2$ corrections to the valence-valence meson mass in the mixed theory due to the enhanced chiral symmetry of the valence sector.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX2e; references adde