Computation of the chiral condensate using $N_f=2$ and $N_f=2+1+1$ dynamical flavors of twisted mass fermions

Abstract

We apply the spectral projector method, recently introduced by Giusti and L\"uscher, to compute the chiral condensate using $N_f=2$ and $N_f=2+1+1$ dynamical flavors of maximally twisted mass fermions. We present our results for several quark masses at three different lattice spacings which allows us to perform the chiral and continuum extrapolations. In addition we report our analysis on the $O(a)$ improvement of the chiral condensate for twisted mass fermions. We also study the effect of the dynamical strange and charm quarks by comparing our results for $N_f=2$ and $N_f=2+1+1$ dynamical flavors.