Stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions

Abstract

The properties of the momentum-space quark propagator in the Landau gauge are studied for the overlap quark action in quenched lattice QCD. Numerical calculations are performed over four ensembles of gauge configurations, where three are smeared using either 1, 3, or 6 sweeps of stout-link smearing.We calculate the nonperturbative wave-function renormalization function ZðpÞ and the nonperturbative mass function MðpÞ for a variety of bare quark masses.We find that the wave-function renormalization function is slightly sensitive to the number of stout-link smearing sweeps. For the mass function we find the effect of the stout-link smearing algorithm to be small for moderate to light bare quark masses. For a heavy bare quark mass we find a strong dependence on the number of smearing sweeps.