An improved single-plaquette gauge action

• Published in: The journal of high energy physics Vol. 2016; no. 3; pp. 1 - 23
• Main Authors: Banerjee, D., Bögli, M., Holland, K., Niedermayer, F., Pepe, M., Wenger, U., Wiese, U. J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.03.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Classical and Quantum Gravitation; Continuums; Cut-off; Elementary Particles; Gages; Gauge theory; Gauges; High energy physics; Lattices; Mathematical models; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quantum Physics; Reduction; Regular Article - Theoretical Physics; Relativity Theory; String Theory; Lattice QCD; Lattice Quantum Field Theory
• ISSN: 1029-8479; 1029-8479
• DOI: 10.1007/JHEP03(2016)116

A bstract We describe and test a nonperturbatively improved single-plaquette lattice action for 4-d SU(2) and SU(3) pure gauge theory, which suppresses large fluctuations of the plaquette, without requiring the naive continuum limit for smooth fields. We tune the action parameters based on torelon masses in moderate cubic physical volumes, and investigate the size of cut-off effects in other physical quantities, including torelon masses in asymmetric spatial volumes, the static quark potential, and gradient flow observables. In 2-d O( N ) models similarly constructed nearest-neighbor actions have led to a drastic reduction of cut-off effects, down to the permille level, in a wide variety of physical quantities. In the gauge theories, we find significant reduction of lattice artifacts, and for some observables, the coarsest lattice result is very close to the continuum value. We estimate an improvement factor of 40 compared to using the Wilson gauge action to achieve the same statistical accuracy and suppression of cut-off effects.