In this thesis I study Quantum Chromodynamics on the lattice. A central theme will be the concept of improvement; this is choosing the lattice Lagrangian to minimise the effects of the lattice spacing on the results from numerical simulation. The first chapter reviews lattice gauge theory and introduces the idea of improvement. The techniques used in numerical simulations are briefly described. The second chapter will discuss whether an improved fermion lattice action called the clover action, obeys the reflection positivity condition. This is related to the existence of a transfer matrix. In the third chapter I will study the clover action in the strong coupling limit. Results for the pion and rho masses will be reported. A calculation of the O(a) lattice artifact correction to the gluon vacuum polarisation diagram for the clover action is described in chapter 4. The penultimate chapter contains results from various numerical simulations of lattice QCD using the clover action. The masses of some P-wave mesons will be reported, and used in a calculation of the QCD coupling. Results from a simulation of particles at finite momentum will be discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:657107 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | McNeile, Craig |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/15359 |
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