Unexpected Results in the Chiral Limit with Staggered Fermions

A cluster algorithm is constructed and applied to study the chiral limit of the strongly coupled lattice Schwinger model involving staggered fermions. The algorithm is based on a novel loop representation of the model. Finite size scaling of the chiral susceptibility based on data from lattices of size up to $64\times 64$ indicates the absence of long range correlations at strong couplings. Assuming that there is no phase transition at a weaker coupling, the results imply that all mesons acquire a mass at non-zero lattice spacings. Although this does not violate any known physics, it is surprising since typically one expects a single pion to remain massless at non-zero lattice spacings in the staggered fermion formulation.