Chiral properties of pseudoscalar mesons on a quenched 20⁴ lattice with overlap fermions

Abstract

The chiral properties of the pseudoscalar mesons are studied numerically on a quenched 20⁴ lattice with the overlap fermion. We elucidate the role of the zero modes in the meson propagators, particularly that of the pseudoscalar meson. The non-perturbative renormalization constant ZA is determined from the axial Ward identity and is found to be almost independent of the quark mass for the range of quark masses we study; this implies that the O(a2) error is small. The pion decay constant fπ is calculated from which we determine the lattice spacing to be 0.148 fm. We look for the quenched chiral log in the pseudoscalar decay constants and the pseudoscalar masses and we find clear evidence for its presence. The chiral log parameter δ is determined to be in the range 0.15–0.4, which is consistent with that predicted from quenched chiral perturbation theory.