The quark propagator is at the core of lattice hadron spectrum calculations as well as studies in other nonperturbative schemes. We investigate the quark propagator with an improved staggered action (Asqtad) and an improved gluon action, which provides good quality data down to small quark masses. This is used to construct ansätze suitable for model hadron calculations as well as adding to our intuitive understanding of QCD.
The lattice quark propagatorThe quark propagator is a fundamental quantity of QCD. Though gauge dependent, it manifestly displays dynamical chiral symmetry breaking, contains the chiral condensate and Λ QCD , and has been used to compute the running quark mass [1]. Some model hadron calculations rely on ansätze for the quark propagator [2], yet on the lattice we have the opportunity to study it in a direct, nonperturbative fashion.We use the "Asqtad" quark action [3], a highly improved staggered action that formally has no O(a 2 ) errors. We extend some earlier work [4] by also using an improved gluon action. We have calculated the quark propagator on three sets of configurations: 12 3 × 24 and 16 3 × 32 at β = 4.60 (a = 0.125 fm) and 16 3 × 32 at β = 4.38 (a = 0.167 fm), each ensemble consisting of 100 configurations. The configurations were fixed to Landau gauge. Most results shown here are from the larger, finer lattice, where we used 8 quark masses: ma = 0. 012, 0.018, 0.024, 0.036, 0.048, 0.072, 0.108, 0.144 (19 to 114 MeV).In the (Euclidean) continuum, Lorentz invariance allows us to decompose the full quark propagator into Dirac vector and scalar piecesAsymptotic freedom means that, as p 2 → ∞, S −1 (p 2 ) → iγ · p + m, (the free propagator) where m is the bare quark mass. * Talk presented by POB.