Evidence for hard chiral logarithms in quenched lattice QCD

We present the first direct evidence that quenched QCD differs from full QCD in the chiral ($m_q \rightarrow 0$) limit, as predicted by chiral perturbation theory, from our quenched lattice QCD simulations at $\beta = 6/g^2 = 6.0$. We measured the spectrum of light hadrons on $16^3 \times 64$, $24^3 \times 64$ and $32^3 \times 64$, using staggered quarks of masses $m_q=0.01$, $m_q=0.005$ and $m_q=0.0025$. The pion masses showed clear evidence for logarithmic violations of the PCAC relation $m_{\pi}^2 \propto m_q$, as predicted by quenched chiral perturbation theory. The dependence on spatial lattice volume precludes this being a finite size effect. No evidence was seen for such chiral logarithms in the behaviour of the chiral condensate $\langle\bar{\psi}\psi\rangle$.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, uuencoded compressed postscript fil

Effects of spatial size, lattice doubling and source operator on the hadron spectrum with dynamical staggered quarks

We have extended our previous study of the lattice QCD spectrum with 2 flavors of staggered dynamical quarks at $6/g^2=5.6$ and $am_q=0.025$ and 0.01 to larger lattices, with better statistics and with additional sources for the propagators. The additional sources allowed us to estimate the $\Delta$ mass and to measure the masses of all mesons whose operators are local in time. These mesons show good evidence for flavor symmetry restoration, except for the masses of the Goldstone and non-Goldstone pions. PCAC is observed in that $m_\pi^2 \propto m_q$, and $f_\pi$ is estimated. Use of undoubled lattices removes problems with the pion propagator found in our earlier work. Previously we found a large change in the nucleon mass at a quark mass of $am_q=0.01$ when we increased the spatial size from 12 to 16. No such effect is observed at the larger quark mass, $am_q=0.025$. Two kinds of wall source were used, and we have found difficulties in getting consistent results for the nucleon mass between the two sources.Comment: 30 pages PostScript fil

A numerical reinvestigation of the Aoki phase with N_f=2 Wilson fermions at zero temperature

We report on a numerical reinvestigation of the Aoki phase in lattice QCD with two flavors of Wilson fermions where the parity-flavor symmetry is spontaneously broken. For this purpose an explicitly symmetry-breaking source term $h\bar{\psi} i \gamma_{5} \tau^{3}\psi$ was added to the fermion action. The order parameter $$ was computed with the Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm at several values of $(\beta,\kappa,h)$ on lattices of sizes $4^4$ to $12^4$ and extrapolated to $h=0$. The existence of a parity-flavor breaking phase can be confirmed at $\beta=4.0$ and 4.3, while we do not find parity-flavor breaking at $\beta=4.6$ and 5.0.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Revised version as to be published in Phys.Rev.

QCD thermodynamics with two flavors of Wilson quarks at N_t=6

We report on a study of hadron thermodynamics with two flavors of Wilson quarks on 12^3x6 lattices. We have studied the crossover between the high and low temperature regimes for three values of the hopping parameter, kappa=0.16, 0.17, and 0.18. At each of these values of kappa we have carried out spectrum calculations on 12^3x24 lattices for two values of the gauge coupling in the vicinity of the crossover in order to set an energy scale for our thermodynamics calculations and to determine the critical value of the gauge coupling for which the pion and quark masses vanish. For kappa=0.17 and 0.18 we find coexistence between the high and low temperature regimes over 1,000 simulation time units indicating either that the equilibration time is extremely long or that there is a possibility of a first order phase transition. The pion mass is large at the crossover values of the gauge coupling, but the crossover curve has moved closer to the critical curve along which the pion and quark masses vanish, than it was on lattices with four time slices. In addition, values of the dimensionless quantity T_c/m_rho are in closer agreement with those for staggered quarks than was the case at N_t=4. (A POSTSCRIPT VERSION OF THIS PAPER IS AVAILABLE BY ANONYMOUS FTP FROM sarek.physics.ucsb.edu (128.111.8.250) IN THE FILE pub/wilson_thermo.ps)Comment: 24 page

Fermion-scalar interactions with domain wall fermions

Domain wall fermions are defined on a lattice with an extra direction the size of which controls the chiral properties of the theory. When gauge fields are coupled to domain wall fermions the extra direction is treated as an internal flavor space. Here it is found that this is not the case for scalar fields. Instead, the interaction takes place only along the link that connects the boundaries of the extra direction. This reveals a richness in the way different spin particles are coupled to domain wall fermions. As an application, 4-Fermi models are studied using large N techniques and the results are supported by numerical simulations with N=2. It is found that the chiral properties of domain wall fermions in these models are good across a large range of couplings and that a phase with parity-flavor broken symmetry can develop for negative bare masses if the number of sites along the extra direction is finite.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, 8 eps figures; comment regarding the width of Aoki phase added in sec. 3; references adde

Light Quark Masses from Lattice QCD

We present estimates of the masses of light quarks using lattice data. Our main results are based on a global analysis of all the published data for Wilson, Sheikholeslami-Wohlert (clover), and staggered fermions, both in the quenched approximation and with $n_f=2$ dynamical flavors. We find that the values of masses with the various formulations agree after extrapolation to the continuum limit for the $n_f=0$ theory. Our best estimates, in the MSbar scheme at $\mu=2 GeV$, are \mbar=3.4 +- 0.4 +- 0.3 MeV and $m_s = 100 +- 21 +- 10 MeV$ in the quenched approximation. The $n_f=2$ results, \mbar = 2.7 +- 0.3 +- 0.3 MeV and $m_s = 68 +- 12 +- 7 MeV$, are preliminary. (A linear extrapolation in $n_f$ would further reduce these estimates for the physical case of three dynamical flavors.) These estimates are smaller than phenomenological estimates based on sum rules, but maintain the ratios predicted by chiral perturbation theory. The new results have a significant impact on the extraction of $\epsilon'/\epsilon$ from the Standard Model. Using the same lattice data we estimate the quark condensate using the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation. Again the three formulations give consistent results after extrapolation to $a=0$, and the value turns out to be correspondingly larger, roughly preserving m_s \vev{\bar \psi \psi}.Comment: 32 pages. Package submitted in uufiles format: unpack and tex paper.tex. Modified "axis" source for figures also included. Latex2e document. Uncomment hyperref if available. This is the final published versio

Hadron Spectrum in QCD with Valence Wilson Fermions and Dynamical Staggered Fermions at $6/g^2=5.6

We present an analysis of hadronic spectroscopy for Wilson valence quarks with dynamical staggered fermions at lattice coupling $6/g^2 = \beta=5.6$ at sea quark mass $am_q=0.01$ and 0.025, and of Wilson valence quarks in quenched approximation at $\beta=5.85$ and 5.95, both on $16^3 \times 32$ lattices. We make comparisons with our previous results with dynamical staggered fermions at the same parameter values but on $16^4$ lattices doubled in the temporal direction.Comment: 32 page

The pi-N Sigma term - an evaluation using staggered fermions

A lattice calculation of the pi-N sigma term is described using dynamical staggered fermions. Preliminary results give a sea term comparable in magnitude to the valence term.Comment: Latex article, 3 pages. Contribution to the LAT93 Conference (Dallas, U.S.A., September 1993). HLRZ preprint 93-7

Efficient distributed machine learning via combinatorial multi-armed bandits

We consider the distributed stochastic gradient descent problem, where a main node distributes gradient calculations among n workers from which at most b ≤ n can be utilized in parallel. By assigning tasks to all the workers and waiting only for the k fastest ones, the main node can trade-off the error of the algorithm with its runtime by gradually increasing k as the algorithm evolves. However, this strategy, referred to as adaptive k-sync, can incur additional costs since it ignores the computational efforts of slow workers. We propose a cost-efficient scheme that assigns tasks only to k workers and gradually increases k. As the response times of the available workers are unknown to the main node a priori, we utilize a combinatorial multi-armed bandit model to learn which workers are the fastest while assigning gradient calculations, and to minimize the effect of slow workers. Assuming that the mean response times of the workers are independent and exponentially distributed with different means, we give empirical and theoretical guarantees on the regret of our strategy, i.e., the extra time spent to learn the mean response times of the workers. Compared to adaptive k-sync, our scheme achieves significantly lower errors with the same computational efforts while being inferior in terms of speed