Cutoff Effects on Energy-Momentum Tensor Correlators in Lattice Gauge Theory

Abstract

We investigate the discretization errors affecting correlators of the energy-momentum tensor $T_{\mu\nu}$ at finite temperature in SU($N_c$) gauge theory with the Wilson action and two different discretizations of $T_{\mu\nu}$. We do so by using lattice perturbation theory and non-perturbative Monte-Carlo simulations. These correlators, which are functions of Euclidean time $x_0$ and spatial momentum ${\bf p}$, are the starting point for a lattice study of the transport properties of the gluon plasma. We find that the correlator of the energy $\int d^3x T_{00}$ has much larger discretization errors than the correlator of momentum $\int d^3x T_{0k}$. Secondly, the shear and diagonal stress correlators ($T_{12}$ and $T_{kk}$) require $\Nt\geq 8$ for the $Tx_0={1/2}$ point to be in the scaling region and the cutoff effect to be less than 10%. We then show that their discretization errors on an anisotropic lattice with $\as/\at=2$ are comparable to those on the isotropic lattice with the same temporal lattice spacing. Finally, we also study finite ${\bf p}$ correlators.