Scaling test of the P4-improved staggered fermion action

Abstract

We present a scaling study of the QCD spectrum using a smeared P4 staggered fermion formulation, in which three, five, and seven-link staples are added to reduce the effects of flavor symmetry breaking. These studies are performed on quenched lattices generated using the one-loop improved Symanzik gauge action, with Beta=10/g^2=7.40,7.75,8.00. The corresponding lattice spacings are a = .31 fm, .21 fm, and .14 fm. Particularly, we study the O(a^2) flavor symmetry violations in the pion spectrum as well as the scaling dependence of m_rho, measured in physical units, on lattice spacing. These results are compared against previous results for the Asqtad action.