English

Properties and uses of the Wilson flow in lattice QCD

High Energy Physics - Lattice 2014-01-28 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Theoretical and numerical studies of the Wilson flow in lattice QCD suggest that the gauge field obtained at flow time t>0 is a smooth renormalized field. The expectation values of local gauge-invariant expressions in this field are thus well-defined physical quantities that probe the theory at length scales on the order of sqrt(t). Moreover, by transforming the QCD functional integral to an integral over the gauge field at a specified flow time, the emergence of the topological (instanton) sectors in the continuum limit becomes transparent and is seen to be caused by a dynamical effect that rapidly separates the sectors when the lattice spacing is reduced from 0.1 fm to smaller values.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1006.4518,
  title  = {Properties and uses of the Wilson flow in lattice QCD},
  author = {Martin Lüscher},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1006.4518},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

Plain TeX source, 21 pages, 4 figures. Corrected figure 2, figure 3 and the quoted values of t0/a^2 in table 1, following the discovery of a bug in the analysis programs (thanks to Yoshifumi Nakamura)