# References

NTUTH-98-101

October 1998

GW fermion propagators and chiral condensate

Ting-Wai Chiu

Department of Physics, National Taiwan University

Taipei, Taiwan 106, R.O.C.

E-mail : twchiu@phys.ntu.edu.tw

## Abstract

By exploiting the chiral symmetry, we derive analytic formulas for the massless and the massive Ginsparg-Wilson fermion propagators. Using these formulas, we derive an expression for the chiral condensate which is the order parameter for spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in QCD. These formulas provide the proper way to compute the fermion propagators and may save a significant amount of computing time especially for large lattices in four dimensions.

PACS numbers: 11.15.Ha, 11.30.Fs, 11.30.Rd

It is well understood that the proper way to break the chiral symmetry of a chirally symmetric Dirac operator $`D_c`$ on the lattice is to replace $`D_c`$ by

$$D=D_c(\text{1I}+RD_c)^1$$
(1)   
where $`R`$ is any hermitian operator which is local in the position space and trivial in the Dirac space. Then the Dirac operator $`D`$ satisfies the Ginsparg-Wilson relation 

$$D\gamma _5+\gamma _5D=2D\gamma _5RD$$
(2)   
where the particular form of the chiral symmetry breaking on the RHS having one $`\gamma _5`$ sandwiched by two Dirac operators is the signature of the Ginsparg-Wilson fermion. This implies the chiral Ward identities, non-renormalization of vector and flavor non-singlet axial vector currents, and non-mixing of operators in different chiral representations, as shown by Hasenfratz . The general solution  of the GW relation, Eq. (1), can be regarded as a chiral symmetry breaking transformation which gaurantees that a zero mode of $`D_c`$ is also a zero mode of $`D`$ and vice versa, hence the index of $`D`$ is equal to the index of $`D_c`$. Then it is obvious to see that the presence of $`R`$ cannot produce a zero mode for $`D`$ if $`D_c`$ does not possess any zero modes in topologically nontrivial background gauge fields. We refer to ref.  for further discussions on topological characteristics of $`D`$ ( $`D_c`$ ). Now we can replace $`R`$ in Eq. (2) by any two hermitian operators $`S`$ and $`T`$ having the same properties of $`R`$, and rewrite Eq. (2) as the following,

$`D\gamma _5(\text{1I}SD)+(\text{1I}DT)\gamma _5D=0,`$ (3)   
then it is evident that the action $`A=\overline{\psi }D\psi `$ is invariant under the finite chiral transformation on the lattice

$`\overline{\psi }\overline{\psi }\mathrm{exp}[i\theta (\text{1I}DT)\gamma _5]`$ (4)   
$`\psi \mathrm{exp}[i\theta \gamma _5(\text{1I}SD)]\psi ,`$ (5)   
where $`\theta `$ is a global parameter. This generalizes the infinitesimal chiral transformation observed by Lüscher . In general, we can regard the Ginsparg-Wilson relation in the form of Eq. (3) as the exact chiral symmetry on the lattice, which recovers the usual chiral symmetry $`\gamma _5D+D\gamma _5=0`$ in the continuum limit ( $`a0`$ ). Such a generalization seems to be cruical for formulating chiral gauge theories on the lattice.

In this paper, we will concentrate on the problem of evaluating the fermion propagator $`D^1`$ of the Ginsparg-Wilson fermion. From Eq. (1), we immediately obtain

$`D^1=D_c^1+R`$ (6)   
Hence, the fermion propagator $`D^1`$ is completely determined for any $`R`$ if the chiral fermion propagator $`D_c^1`$ has been evaluated. In fact, the long distance properties of $`D^1`$ are governed by the long distance properties of $`D_c^1`$ since $`R`$ is supposed to be local. Furthermore, we will show that the short distance behavior of $`D^1`$ which is relevant to the the chiral condensate is also determined by $`D_c^1`$. Therefore the physics of any Ginsparg-Wilson fermion operator $`D`$ actually lies in its chiral limit $`D_c`$. However, only $`D_c`$ itself is not sufficent to constitute the correct lattice fermion operator. According to the Nielson-Ninomiya no-go theorem , if we require $`D`$ to be local and free of species doubling, then the chiral symmetry $`\{\gamma _5,D\}=0`$ must be broken. The transformation in Eq. (1) provides the proper chiral symmetry breaking which not only preserves the correct physics of $`D_c`$, but also removes its non-locality for any gauge configurations as well as its singularities in topologically nontrivial gauge fields. We note in passing that the locality requirement for the GW fermion should be imposed on the unitary operator $`V`$ in Eq. (8) rather than on $`D`$, since the non-locality of $`V`$ is due to the initial construction and thus cannot be diminished, while the locality of $`D`$ is always gauranteed by a properly chosen $`R`$ in Eq. (1).

In the following, we derive a formula for the chiral fermion propagator for any $`D_c`$ satisfying the hermiticity condition

$`\gamma _5D_c\gamma _5=D_c^{}.`$ (7)   
The hermiticity condition and the chiral symmetry of $`D_c`$ implies that $`D_c`$ is antihermitian, thus there exists one to one correspondence between $`D_c`$ and a unitary operator $`V`$,

$`D_c=(\text{1I}+V)(\text{1I}V)^1,V=(D_c\text{1I})(D_c+\text{1I})^1.`$ (8)   
where $`V`$ also satisfies the hermiticity condition ( $`\gamma _5V\gamma _5=V^{}`$ ). Then the unitary operator $`V`$ can be expressed in terms of a hermitian operator $`h`$,

$`V=\gamma _5h=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\text{1I}& 0\\ 0& \text{1I}\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cc}h_1& h_2\\ h_2^{}& h_3\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}h_1& h_2\\ h_2^{}& h_3\end{array}\right)`$ (15)   
where $`h_1^{}=h_1`$ and $`h_3^{}=h_3`$. Using the unitarity condition $`V^{}V=\text{1I}`$, we have $`h^2=\text{1I}`$,

$`h^2=\left(\begin{array}{cc}h_1^2+h_2h_2^{}& h_1h_2+h_2h_3\\ h_2^{}h_1+h_3h_2^{}& h_2^{}h_2+h_3^2\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\text{1I}& 0\\ 0& \text{1I}\end{array}\right)`$ (20)   
Then we immediately obtain

$`D_c=(\text{1I}+V)(\text{1I}V)^1=\left[\begin{array}{cc}0& (\text{1I}h_1)^1h_2\\ h_2^{}(\text{1I}h_1)^1& 0\end{array}\right]`$ (23)   
and

$`D_c^1=(\text{1I}V)(\text{1I}+V)^1=\left[\begin{array}{cc}0& (\text{1I}+h_1)^1h_2\\ h_2^{}(\text{1I}+h_1)^1& 0\end{array}\right]`$ (26)   
The last formula together with Eq. (6) reduce the task of computing $`D^1`$ for any $`R`$ to that of computing $`(\text{1I}+h_1)^1`$ only. For a four dimensional lattice of volume $`\mathrm{\Omega }=L^4`$, the former is to compute the inverse of a complex matrix of size $`4L^4\times 4L^4`$ ( multiplicities due to the color and the flavor have been suppressed ), while the latter only amounts to computing the inverse of a hermitian matrix of size $`2L^4\times 2L^4`$. Further simplifications are possible, however, depend on the actual form of $`V`$ ( $`D_c`$ ) as well as the algorithm used for computing the inverse. We do not intend to go into these technical details in this paper. In principle, the formula (26) provides the proper way to compute the fermion propagator for any Ginsparg-Wilson fermion and serves as a starting point for devising highly optimized algorithms for computing the fermion propagators.

In order to investigate the spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking ( $`\chi SB`$ ) of QCD, we usually introduce a mass parameter $`m`$ to the Dirac operator $`D`$, and then measure the chiral condensate in the thermodynamic limit $`\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}`$ followed by the massless limit $`m0`$. The proper way to introduce the mass parameter to the Dirac operator $`D`$ is to add the mass $`m`$ to the chirally symmetric $`D_c`$ as in the continuum theory, but not  to $`D`$ directly. Then the GW-Dirac operator (1) becomes

$`D=(D_c+m)(\text{1I}+RD_c)^1`$ (27)   
It should be noted that the mass $`m`$ is not added to the $`D_c`$ in the last inverse operator which is inserted for breaking the chiral symmetry a la Ginsparg-Wilson. Then the fermion propagator for massive GW fermion is

$`D^1=R+(\text{1I}mR)(D_c+m)^1`$ (28)   
where

$`(D_c+m)^1=\left(\begin{array}{cc}m(\text{1I}h_1)B& Bh_2\\ h_2^{}B& m^1[\text{1I}h_2^{}B(\text{1I}h_1)^1h_2]\end{array}\right)`$ (31)   
and

$$B=[\text{1I}+m^2+(\text{1I}m^2)h_1]^1.$$
(32)   
Again, the amount of computations using above formulas is significantly less than that of computing $`(D_c+m)^1`$ directly. Once $`(D_c+m)^1`$ is evaluated, then it almost takes no time to obtain $`D^1`$ for any $`R`$ using Eq. (28).

Now we can write down the usual expression for the chiral condensate

$`\chi =\underset{m0}{lim}\underset{\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \underset{x}{}}\text{tr}\left[D^1(x,x)|_{R=0}\right]`$ (33)   
where the brackets $`<\mathrm{}>`$ denote averaging over each gauge configuration with the weight $`\text{det}(D)\mathrm{exp}(A_g)`$, and $`A_g`$ is the pure gauge action. The reason to set $`R=0`$ in $`D^1`$ is obvious, since it is an arbitrary operator introduced for breaking the chiral symmetry a la Ginsparg-Wilson, thus it is irrelevant to the physical $`\chi SB`$ of QCD, and must be dropped <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1Note that setting $`R=0`$ in (33) does not necessarily reinstall doubling if $`D_c`$ is non-local, as have been discussed in detail in ref. .. Inserting (28) into (33), we have

$`\chi =\underset{m0}{lim}\underset{\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \underset{x}{}}\text{tr}[(D_c+m)^1(x,x)]`$ (34)   
The subtleness of Eq. (34) lies in its two limiting processes. If the order of these two limiting processes is exchanged, then $`\chi `$ must be zero since spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking could not occur on a finite lattice for exactly massless fermion. Using (31), we can simplify Eq. (34) to the following expression

$`\chi =\underset{m0}{lim}\underset{\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \underset{x}{}}2m\text{tr}\left[(\text{1I}h_1)B\right](x,x)`$ (35)   
where $`B`$ is defined in Eq. (32). This is a simpler expression than (34) since it only involves $`h_1`$, the hermitian submatrix of $`h=\gamma _5V`$ defined in (15). The most time consuming operation in (35) is to evaluate the inverse matrix $`B`$.

Now we restore the weight $`\text{det}(D)\mathrm{exp}(A_g)`$ embedded inside the brackets $`<\mathrm{}>`$ and rewrite (35) in the following,

$`\chi =\underset{m0}{lim}\underset{\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{Z}}{\displaystyle [dU]\mathrm{exp}(A_g)\text{det}(D)\underset{x}{}2m\text{tr}[(\text{1I}h_1)B](x,x)}`$ (36)   
where

$$Z=[dU]\mathrm{exp}(A_g)\text{det}(D)$$
(37)   
and

$$\text{det}(D)=\text{det}(D_c)\text{det}(\text{1I}+RD_c)^1$$
(38)   
using Eq. (1). From the GW relation (2), it is obvious that we can redefine $`D^{}=RD`$ such that $`D^{}`$ satisfies (2) with $`R=1`$. However, one cannot set $`R=1`$ to the valence quarks since that would produce terms which are not relevent to the physical chiral symmetry breaking in QCD, as discussed after Eq. (33). On the other hand, for quarks in the internal quark loops, the chiral symmetry must be broken such that $`D`$ can be local and free of species doubling, then the fermionic determinant and the axial anomaly can turn out to be correct. Therefore we can set $`R`$ to one in Eq. (38), provided that $`D_c`$ has the correct classical continuum limit. Using Eq. (23), we obtain

$$\text{det}(D)=\text{det}\left(\frac{\text{1I}+h_1}{2}\right)=\text{det}\left(\frac{\text{1I}h_3}{2}\right)$$
(39)   
In topologically nontrivial gauge sectors, the zero modes of $`D`$ corresponding to the $`1`$ eigenmodes of $`h_1`$, but the $`+1`$ eigenmodes of $`h_3`$. Further implementations of computing $`\chi `$ depend on the actual form of $`V`$ ( or $`D_c`$ ) as well as the simulation algorithms. However, we will not go into these technical details in this paper. Now we put the results together and rewrite the chiral condensate in the following formula

$`\chi `$ $`=`$ $`\underset{m0}{lim}\underset{\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{Z}}{\displaystyle [dU]\mathrm{exp}(A_g)\text{det}\left(\frac{\text{1I}+h_1}{2}\right)}`$ (40)   
$`{\displaystyle \underset{x}{}}2m\text{tr}\left[(\text{1I}h_1)[\text{1I}+m^2+(\text{1I}m^2)h_1]^1(x,x)\right]`$   
where $`h_1`$ is the hermitian submatrix defined in Eq. (15) and

$$Z=[dU]\mathrm{exp}(A_g)\text{det}\left(\frac{\text{1I}+h_1}{2}\right)$$
(41)   
If the chirally symmetric $`D_c`$ is initially specified as

$`D_c=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& D_L^{}\\ D_L& 0\end{array}\right)`$ (44)   
but not in terms of $`V=\gamma _5h`$, then it is straightforward to rewrite all formulas for the fermion propagators and the chiral condensate in terms of $`D_L`$.

Finally, we note that Neuberger  recently obtained an expression for the chiral condensate in the massless limit and in a fixed gauge background, in the framework of the overlap formalism . Neuberger’s result would agree with our general formula (40) if the mass parameter is introduced to the fermion propagator and the formula (31) is used.

In summary, we have derived analytic formulas for the GW fermion propagators, for the massless and the massive cases respectively. These formulas provide the proper way to compute GW fermion propagators in analytic studies as well as numerical ones. They also serve as a starting point for devising optimized algorithms for computing fermion propagators. An analytic formula for the chiral condensate is derived and is ready for numerical implementations for Monte Carlo simulations including dynamical fermions.

Acknowledgement 

This work was supported by the National Science Council, R.O.C. under the grant number NSC88-2112-M002-016.