Listening to Noise

Abstract

We show how sign problems in simulations of many-body systems can manifest themselves in the form of heavy-tailed correlator distributions, similar to what is seen in electron propagation through disordered media. We propose an alternative statistical approach for extracting ground state energies in such systems, illustrating the method with a toy model and with lattice data for unitary fermions and for baryons in QCD.

Comments: Plenary talk presented at the XXIX International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2011), Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, California, July 10-16, 2011