The overlap operator as a continued fraction

Abstract

We use a continued fraction expansion of the sign-function in order to obtain a five dimensional formulation of the overlap lattice Dirac operator. Within this formulation the inverse of the overlap operator can be calculated by a single Krylov space method where nested conjugate gradient procedures are avoided. We show that the five dimensional linear system can be made well conditioned using equivalence transformations on the continued fractions. This is of significant importance when dynamical overlap fermions are simulated.