Evidence for hard chiral logarithms in quenched lattice QCD

Abstract

We present the first direct evidence that quenched QCD differs from full QCD in the chiral ($m_q \rightarrow 0$) limit, as predicted by chiral perturbation theory, from our quenched lattice QCD simulations at $\beta = 6/g^2 = 6.0$. We measured the spectrum of light hadrons on $16^3 \times 64$, $24^3 \times 64$ and $32^3 \times 64$, using staggered quarks of masses $m_q=0.01$, $m_q=0.005$ and $m_q=0.0025$. The pion masses showed clear evidence for logarithmic violations of the PCAC relation $m_{\pi}^2 \propto m_q$, as predicted by quenched chiral perturbation theory. The dependence on spatial lattice volume precludes this being a finite size effect. No evidence was seen for such chiral logarithms in the behaviour of the chiral condensate $\langle\bar{\psi}\psi\rangle$.