Taming the Signal-to-Noise Problem in Lattice QCD by Phase Reweighting

Abstract

Path integrals describing quantum many-body systems can be calculated with Monte Carlo sampling techniques, but average quantities are often subject to signal-to-noise ratios that degrade exponentially with time. A phase-reweighting technique inspired by recent observations of random walk statistics in correlation functions is proposed that allows energy levels to be extracted from late-time correlation functions with time-independent signal-to-noise ratios. Phase reweighting effectively includes dynamical refinement of source magnitudes but introduces a bias associated with the phase. This bias can be removed by performing an extrapolation, but at the expense of re-introducing a signal-to-noise problem. Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics calculations of the $\rho$ and nucleon masses and of the $\Xi\Xi$ binding energy show consistency between standard results obtained using earlier-time correlation functions and phase-reweighted results using late-time correlation functions inaccessible to standard statistical analysis methods.