We have investigated QCD with two flavors of degenerate fermions using a Symanzik-improved lattice action for both the gauge and fermion actions. Our study focuses on the deconfinement transition on an Nt=4 lattice. Having located the thermal transition, we performed zero temperature simulations nearby in order to compute hadronic masses and the static quark potential. We find that the present action reduces lattice artifacts present in thermodynamics with the standard Wilson (gauge and fermion) actions. However, it does not bring studies with Wilson-type quarks to the same level as those using the Kogut--Susskind formulation.
@article{arxiv.hep-lat/9703003,
title = {QCD Thermodynamics with an Improved Lattice Action},
author = {Claude Bernard and James E. Hetrick and Thomas DeGrand and Matthew Wingate and Carleton DeTar and Steven Gottlieb and Urs M. Heller and Kari Rummukainen and Doug Toussaint and Robert L. Sugar and : and MILC Collaboration},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-lat/9703003},
year = {2012}
}