Vortices and the SU(3) string tension

We present simulation results comparing the SU(3) heavy quark potential extracted from the full Wilson loop expectation to that extracted from the expectation of the Wilson loop fluctuation solely by elements of Z(3). The two potentials are found to coincide. This agreement is stable under multiple smoothings of the configurations which remove short distance fluctuations, and thus reflects long-distance physics. It strongly indicates that the asymptotic string tension arises from thick center vortices linking with the Wilson loop.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX file with 6 eps figure

Lattice quark propagator with staggered quarks in Landau and Laplacian gauges

We report on the lattice quark propagator using standard and improved Staggered quark actions, with the standard, Wilson gauge action. The standard Kogut-Susskind action has errors of \oa{2} while the ``Asqtad'' action has \oa{4}, \oag{2}{2} errors. The quark propagator is interesting for studying the phenomenon of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and as a test-bed for improvement. Gauge dependent quantities from lattice simulations may be affected by Gribov copies. We explore this by studying the quark propagator in both Landau and Laplacian gauges. Landau and Laplacian gauges are found to produce very similar results for the quark propagator.Comment: 11 pages, 15 figure

Gluon propagator and zero-momentum modes on the lattice

We investigate the propagators of 4D SU(2) gauge theory in Landau gauge by Monte Carlo simulations. To be able to compare with perturbative calculations we use large $\beta$ values. There the breaking of the Z(2) symmetry causes large effects for all four lattice directions and doing the analysis in the appropriate state gets important. We find that the gluon propagator in the weak-coupling limit is strongly affected by zero-momentum modes.Comment: 3 pages, LaTeX, 5 figures, uses espcrc2.sty and epsfig.sty. Contribution to Lattice'9

Topology and Chiral Symmetry in QCD with Overlap Fermions

We briefly review the overlap formalism for chiral gauge theories, the overlap Dirac operator for massless fermions and its connection to domain wall fermions. We describe properties of the overlap Dirac operator, and methods to implement it numerically. Finally, we give some examples of quenched calculations of chiral symmetry breaking and topology with overlap fermions.Comment: 12 pages with 6 ps figures; crckapb.sty included; to appear in the proceedings of the workshop "Lattice Fermions and Structure of the Vacuum", Oct 5-9, Dubna, Russi

First experiences with HMC for dynamical overlap fermions

We describe an HMC algorithm for dynamical overlap fermions which makes use of their good chiral properties. We test the algorithm in the Schwinger model. Topological sectors are readily changed even in the massless case.Comment: 4 pages with 1 ps figure; crckapb.sty included; to appear in the proceedings of the workshop "Lattice Fermions and Structure of the Vacuum", Oct 5-9, Dubna, Russi