# Computation of the improvement coefficient 𝑐_sw to 1-loop with improved gluon actions talk presented by S. Aoki

## 1 Introduction

For the on-shell $`O(a)`$ improvement program with the clover action, it is important to adjust the clover coefficient $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}`$, which is currently well-determined only for the Wilson plaquette gluon action. Although this is enough for the $`O(a)`$ improvement, the so-called renormalization group (RG) improved gluon action, combined with the clover action, has been recently employed in full QCD simulations  to reduce possible $`O(a^2)`$ errors. The value of $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}`$ for the RG improved action, however, was known neither non-perturbatively nor at 1-loop order of perturbation theory. Instead a “perturbative mean field” value $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}=(10.8412\beta ^1)^{3/4}`$ has been used up to now in actual simulations. Therefore it seems desirable to fully determine $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}`$ at 1-loop level, in order to be able to estimate how large the errors in this approximation are.

We sketch here the main points of our computation  of $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}`$ at 1-loop order of perturbation theory for gluon actions including six-link loops. We have also computed the mixing coefficients $`c_\mathrm{X}`$ as well as the coefficients $`b_\mathrm{Y}`$ of the mass dependent corrections (needed for $`O(a)`$ improvement) for quark bilinear operators of dimension 3. We follow the method of refs. to compute these quantities and use their notations without further notices. More details can be found in ref. .

## 2 Gauge actions

In this section we specify the gauge actions, focusing on differences with respect to previous calculations.

The considered gauge action $`S[U]`$ belongs to a general class containing loops up to length 6

$$S[U]=\frac{2}{g_0^2}\underset{i=0}{\overset{3}{}}c_i\underset{𝒞𝒮_i}{}(𝒞)$$
(1)   
where the $`𝒮_i`$ denote sets of elementary loops $`𝒞`$ on the lattice as given in fig. 1, and $`(𝒞)=\mathrm{ReTr}[IU(𝒞)]`$ with $`U(𝒞)`$ being the ordered product of the link variables $`U_\mu (x)`$ along $`𝒞`$. The coefficients $`c_i`$ are normalized such that $`c_0+8c_1+16c_2+8c_3=1`$.

In our computations we have only considered actions with $`c_2=0`$. Apart from the Wilson action ($`c_1=c_3=0`$), we have studied 4 actions, which are specified in table 1.

To compute improvement coefficients we work in the framework of the Schrödinger functional (SF), where the theory is defined on hypercubic lattices of volume $`L^3\times T`$ with cylindrical geometry, i.e. periodic-type boundary conditions in the spatial directions and Dirichlet boundary conditions in the time direction.

To ensure $`O(a)`$ improvement for all on–shell quantities in the SF framework, one needs in the gauge action a careful choice of weights for the loops that are located near the time boundaries. Following ref. , we rewrite the gauge action as

$$S[U]=\frac{2}{g_0^2}\underset{i=0}{\overset{3}{}}\underset{𝒞𝒮_i}{}W_i(𝒞)(𝒞),$$
(2)   
where the elements of the classes $`𝒮_i`$ consist of all loops of the given shape which can be drawn on the cylindrical lattice. In particular rectangles protruding out of the cylinder are not included and hence we do not have to specify further boundary conditions for link variables outside the cylinder. The weights $`W_i(𝒞)`$ are set to $`c_i`$, for $`i=0,1,2,3`$ and for all loops excepted the plaquettes ($`i=0`$) and the rectangles ($`i=1`$) near the time boundaries.

Since a non-vanishing background field is required for the calculation of $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}^{(1)}`$, we adopt the following choice for the remaining weights: $`W_1(𝒞)=\frac{3}{2}c_1`$ if the rectangle $`𝒞`$ has exactly 2 links on a time boundary, $`W_1(𝒞)=c_1`$ if it has only 1 link on a time boundary and $`W_{1,2,3}(𝒞)=0`$ if it completely lies on one of the time boundaries; $`W_0(𝒞)=c_0`$ if the plaquette $`𝒞`$ touches a time boundary and $`W_0(𝒞)=\frac{1}{2}`$ if it completely lies on a time boundary. An advantage of this choice is that the classical background field, induced by the SF boundary conditions, is analytically known.

Since no background field is necessary for the calculation of $`c_\mathrm{X}^{(1)}`$ and $`b_\mathrm{Y}^{(1)}`$, we have used in this case a simpler choice of weights: $`W_1(𝒞)=c_1`$ if the rectangle $`𝒞`$ just touches one of the boundaries and $`W_{1,2,3}(𝒞)=0`$ if it completely lies on one of the time boundaries; $`W_0(𝒞)=c_0+2c_1`$ if the plaquette $`𝒞`$ touches a time boundary and $`W_0(𝒞)=\frac{1}{2}`$ if it completely lies on a time boundary.

## 3 Results and Conclusion

We present in table 1 a synthesis of all our 1-loop results, including a comparison with the case of the standard plaquette action.

We first notice that tadpole contributions to the $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}^{(1)}`$, denoted $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}^{tad}`$ in the table, give about 90% of the complete 1-loop contributions for all actions considered here. Therefore the value of $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}`$ taken by the CP-PACS collaboration for their full QCD simulation with RG1 gauge action is very close to the full one-loop value up to order $`g_0^4`$: $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}^{pert.}=c_{\mathrm{sw}}^{CPPACS}+0.008g_0^2+\mathrm{O}(g_0^4)`$ .

Although only 3 choices of RG improved gauge actions are considered, it seems that RG improved gauge actions generally give a $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}^{(1)}`$ which is a factor 2 to 2.5 smaller than that of the plaquette action, while for the perturbative improved action (LW) the reduction factor is only about $`1.35`$. This tendency has already been found in the finite part of 1-loop renormalization factors for various quantities , and it is also observed in table 1 for other improvement coefficients, the $`c_\mathrm{X}^{(1)}`$’s and $`b_\mathrm{Y}^{(1)}`$’s. Recently the coefficients $`c_\mathrm{X}^{(1)}`$ and $`b_\mathrm{Y}^{(1)}`$ have been calculated by Taniguchi and Ukawa  using a completely different method. The two sets of results agree well.

The smallness of 1-loop improvement coefficients for the RG improved actions does not imply the smallness of the lattice artifacts for the same actions. To get some impression of these, following ref. , we consider the unrenormalized current quark mass $`m`$, defined through the PCAC relation (see eq.(6.13) of ref.  ), which is expected to vanish up to terms of order $`a^2`$ at $`m_0=m_\mathrm{c}`$. In the perturbative expansion of $`m`$, $`am=r_0+r_1C_\mathrm{F}g_0^2+\mathrm{O}(g_0^4)`$, the value of $`r_1`$ at $`m_0=m_\mathrm{c}`$ and $`x_0=T/2`$ represents the magnitude of the remaining cutoff effect for the particular gauge action at 1-loop order, since the tree-level contribution $`r_0`$ is independent of the pure gauge action. In fig. 2 we have plotted $`r_1`$ for various actions as a function of $`a/L`$, taking $`T=2L`$, $`\theta =0`$ and vanishing boundary gauge field (in which case the tree-level contribution actually vanishes). At large values of $`a/L`$ it is observed that this 1-loop lattice artifact is indeed smaller for the RG improved gauge actions than for the LW action, for which it is still smaller than for the plaquette action.