Nonperturbative tuning of $O(a^2)$ improved staggered fermions

Di Pierro, Massimo; Mackenzie, Paul

Nonperturbative tuning of $O(a^2)$ improved staggered fermions

Authors

Description

We perform a nonperturbative tuning of the coefficients in the $O(a^2)$ improved action for staggered fermions. The mass splitting for the pions of different doubler flavor is used as a measure of the symmetry breaking effects introduced by $O(a^2)$ discretization errors. We find that the flavor nondegeneracy can be somewhat reduced but not eliminated by such a tuning, indicating the need for new terms in the action to reduce the nondegeneracy.
3 pages. Lattice 2001 proceedings