Lattice QCD with Improved Staggered Quarks

Abstract:

Lattice QCD has crossed a major threshold in the last two years: realistic simulations that include full quark vacuum polarization are now feasible on PC clusters and other sorts of large-scale computer currently available. This breakthrough is a consequence of the reintroduction and improvement of the "staggered" quark discretization of the light-quark action. This talk will describe the curious recent history of staggered quarks, some unusual properties of naive/staggered quarks, and the striking implications of these developments for Standard Model phenomenology.