Three Dirac operators on two architectures with one piece of code and no hassle

A simple minded approach to implement three discretizations of the Dirac operator (staggered, Wilson, Brillouin) on two architectures (KNL and core i7) is presented. The idea is to use a high-level compiler along with OpenMP parallelization and SIMD pragmas, but to stay away from cache-line optimization and/or assembly-tuning. The implementation is for N_v right-hand-sides, and this extra index is used to fill the SIMD pipeline. On one KNL node single precision performance figures for N_c=3, N_v=12 read 475 Gflop/s, 345 Gflop/s, and 790 Gflop/s for the three discretization schemes, respectively.Comment: 1+6 pages, 3 figures, proceedings of Lattice 2018; v2: typos in eqs. (3.1) and (4.2) corrected, results unchange

Recent Progress in Lattice QCD

Recent progress in Lattice QCD is highlighted. After a brief introduction to the methodology of lattice computations the presentation focuses on three main topics: Hadron Spectroscopy, Hadron Structure and Lattice Flavor Physics. In each case a summary of recent computations of selected quantities is provided.Comment: Review talk given at Physics in Collision 2012, Strbske Pleso, Slovakia; 14 pages, 4 tables, 6 figure

Physics of eta-prime with rooted staggered quarks

The quark-mass dependence of the eta in the Schwinger model, which -- like the eta-prime in QCD -- becomes massive through the axial anomaly, is studied on the lattice with N_f=0,1,2. Staggered quarks are used, with a rooted determinant for N_f=1. In the chiral limit the Schwinger mass is reproduced, which suggests that the anomaly is being treated correctly.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables; v2: presentation improved, 4 refs adde

Validity of ChPT -- is M_\pi=135 MeV small enough ?

I discuss the practical convergence of the SU(2) ChPT series in the meson sector, based on 2+1 flavor lattice data by the Wuppertal-Budapest and Budapest-Marseille-Wuppertal collaborations. These studies employ staggered and clover-improved Wilson fermions, respectively. In both cases large box volumes and several lattice spacings are used, and the pion masses reach down to the physical mass point. We conclude that LO and NLO low-energy constants can be determined with controlled systematics, if there is sufficient data between the physical mass point and about 350 MeV pion mass. Exploratory LO+NLO+NNLO fits with a wider range reveal some distress of the chiral series near M_\pi ~ 400 MeV and suggest a complete breakdown beyond M_\pi ~ 500 MeV.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures; written form of plenary talk at Lattice 201

Convergence issues in ChPT: a lattice perspective

This review addresses the practical convergence of the ChPT series in the p-regime. In the SU(2) framework there is a number of new results, and improved estimates of \bar\ell_3 and \bar\ell_4 are available. In the SU(3) framework few new lattice computations have appeared and the improvement in the precision of the low-energy constants L_i is comparatively slow. I sketch some of the convergence issues genuine to extensions of ChPT which include additional sources of chiral symmetry breaking (finite lattice spacing) and/or violations of unitarity (different sea and valence quark masses). Finally, it is pointed out that the quark mass ratios m_u/m_d, m_s/m_d happen to be such that no reordering of the chiral series is needed to accommodate the experimental pion and kaon masses.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, review talk given at "Kaon 13", Ann Arbo

Lattice fermions with complex mass

We present evidence in the Schwinger model that rooted staggered fermions may correctly describe the m<0 sector of a theory with an odd number of flavors. We point out that in QCD-type theories with a complex-valued quark mass every non-chiral action essentially "borrows" knowledge about the theta-transformation properties from the overlap action.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. v2: eqn. (20) corrected, figs. 3,4 adjusted, conclusions unchanged. v3: text improved, 2 refs. added (version to appear in PRD

Physics prospects of UV-filtered overlap quarks

Some key features of the overlap operator with a UV-filtered Wilson kernel are discussed. The first part concerns spectral properties of the underlying shifted hermitean Wilson operator and the relation to the observed speedup of the overlap construction. Next, the localization of the filtered overlap and its axial-vector renormalization constant are discussed. Finally, results of an exploratory scaling study for $m_{ud}, m_s$ and $f_\pi, f_K$ are presented.Comment: Talk given at Workshop on Computational Hadron Physics, Nicosia, Cyprus, 14-17 Sep 200

Testing UV-filtered ("fat-link") clover fermions

We investigate filtered clover fermions, built from fat gauge links, both in one-loop perturbation theory and in numerical simulations. We use a variety of filtering recipes (APE, HYP, EXP, HEX), some of which are suitable for a HMC with dynamical fermions. A generic filtering together with a (fat-link) clover term yields fermions with much reduced chiral symmetry breaking.Comment: 7 pages, Lattice 2006 (Quark Masses, Gauge Couplings, and Renormalization

Details of a staggered fermion data analysis

We present technical details of an analysis of pseudo-scalar data from a QCD simulation with staggered fermions. The data were obtained close to the physical point with an inverse lattice spacing of about 3 GeV, and $N_f=2+1+1$. We compare different methods of extracting effective masses and decay constants in lattice units. The results of several correlated and uncorrelated fitting methods are compared, both on the simulated data set, and on a synthetically generated data set.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures. Contribution to proceedings of Lattice 201

Calculation of cSWc_\mathrm{SW} at one-loop order for Brillouin fermions

The Brillouin action is a Wilson-like lattice fermion action with a 81-point stencil, which was found to ameliorate the Wilson action in many respects. The Sheikholeslami-Wohlert coefficient $c_\mathrm{SW}$ of the clover improvement term has a perturbative expansion $c_\mathrm{SW}=c_\mathrm{SW}^{(0)}+g_0^2c_\mathrm{SW}^{(1)}+\mathcal{O}(g_0^4)$. At tree-level $c_\mathrm{SW}^{(0)}=r$ holds for Wilson and Brillouin fermions alike. We present the Feynman rules for the Brillouin action in lattice perturbation theory, and employ them to calculate the one-loop coefficient $c_\mathrm{SW}^{(1)}$ with plaquette or L\"uscher-Weisz gluons. Numerically its value is found to be about half that of the Wilson action.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, 10 tables, Version 2: matches published versio