Investigating the critical slowing down of QCD simulations

Abstract

Simulations of QCD are known to suffer from serious critical slowing down towards the continuum limit. This is particularly prominent in the topological charge. We investigate the severeness of the problem in the range of lattice spacings used in contemporary simulations and propose a method to give more reliable error estimates.

Comments: 7 pages, 4 figures, talk presented at The XXVII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 26-31, 2009, Peking University, Beijing, China, v2: Correction in Sec. 4, results unchanged