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4.3.2 Monte Carlo

In order to explain the computations for QCD, we use the Feynman path integral  formalism [Feynman:65a]. For any field theory described by a Lagrangian density , the dynamics of the fields are determined through the action functional

In this language, the measurement of a physical observable represented by an operator is given as the expectation value

 

where the partition function  Z is

In these expressions, the integral indicates a sum over all possible configurations of the field . A typical observable would be a product of fields , which says how the fluctuations in the field are correlated, and in turn, tells us something about the particles that can propagate from point x to point y. The appropriate correlation functions give us, for example, the masses of the various particles in the theory. Thus, to evaluate almost any quantity in field theories like QCD, one must simply evaluate the corresponding path integral. The catch is that the integrals range are over an infinite-dimensional space.

To put the field theory onto a computer, we begin by discretizing space and time into a lattice of points. Then the functional integral is simply defined as the product of the integrals over the fields at every site of the lattice :

Restricting space and time to a finite box, we end up with a finite (but very large) number of ordinary integrals, something we might imagine doing directly on a computer. However, the high dimensionality of these integrals renders conventional mesh techniques impractical. Fortunately, the presence of the exponential means that the integrand is sharply peaked in one region of configuration space. Hence, we resort to a statistical treatment and use Monte Carlo type algorithms to sample the important parts of the integration region [Binder:86a].

Monte Carlo algorithms typically begin with some initial configuration of fields, and then make pseudorandom changes on the fields such that the ultimate probability P of generating a particular field configuration is proportional to the Boltzmann factor,

where is the action associated with the given configuration. There are several ways to implement such a scheme, but for many theories the simple Metropolis  algorithm [Metropolis:53a] is effective. In this algorithm, a new configuration is generated by updating a single variable in the old configuration and calculating the change in action (or energy)

If , the change is accepted; if , the change is accepted with probability . In practice, this is done by generating a pseudorandom number  r in the interval [0,1] with uniform probability distribution, and accepting the change if . This is guaranteed to generate the correct (Boltzmann) distribution of configurations, provided ``detailed balance''  is satisfied. That condition means that the probability of proposing the change is the same as that of proposing the reverse process . In practice, this is true if we never simultaneously update two fields which interact directly via the action. Note that this constraint has important ramifications for parallel computers as we shall see below.

Whichever method one chooses to generate field configurations, one updates the fields for some equilibration time of E steps, and then calculates the expectation value of in Equation 4.3 from the next T configurations as

The statistical error in Monte Carlo behaves as , where N is the number of statistically independent configurations. , where is known as the autocorrelation time. This autocorrelation time can easily be large, and most of the computer time is spent in generating effectively independent configurations. The operator measurements then become a small overhead on the whole calculation.



next up previous contents index
Next: 4.3.3 QCD Up: 4.3 Quantum Chromodynamics Previous: 4.3.1 Introduction



Guy Robinson
Wed Mar 1 10:19:35 EST 1995