Chiral properties of dynamical Wilson fermions

Quantum Chromodynamics with two light quark flavors is considered in the lattice regularization with improved Wilson fermions. In this formulation chiral symmetry is explicitly broken by cutoff effects linear in the lattice spacing a. As a consequence the isovector axial currents require improvement (in the Symanzik sense) as well as a finite renormalization if they are to satisfy the continuum Ward–Takahashi identities associated with the isovector chiral symmetries up to small lattice corrections of O(a). In exploratory numerical simulations of the lattice theory algorithmic difficulties were encountered at coarse lattice spacings. There the hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm used suffers from a distorted Dirac spectrum in the form of unphysically small eigenvalues. This is shown to be a cutoff effect, which disappears rapidly as the lattice spacing is decreased. An alternative algorithm, the polynomial hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm, is found to perform significantly better in the presence of exceptionally small eigenvalues. Extending previously used methods both the improvement and the renormalization of the axial current are implemented non–perturbatively in terms of correlation functions formulated in the framework of the Schrödinger functional. In both cases this is achieved by enforcing continuum Ward identities at finite lattice spacing. Together, this restores the isovector chiral symmetry to quadratic order in the lattice spacing. With little additional effort the normalization factor of the local vector current is also obtained. The methods developed and implemented here can easily be applied to other actions formulated in the Schrödinger functional framework. This includes improved gauge actions as well as theories with more than two dynamical quark flavors.