Comparative Study of Algorithms for the Numerical Simulation of Lattice QCD.

Large-scale numerical simulations are the prime method for a nonperturbative study of QCD from first principles. Although the lattice simulation of the pure-gauge (or quenched-QCD) case may be performed very efficiently on parallel machines, there are several additional difficulties in the simulation of the full-QCD case, i.e. when dynamical quark effects are taken into account. We discuss the main aspects of full-QCD simulations, describing the most common algorithms. We present a comparative analysis of performance for two versions of the hybrid Monte Carlo method (the so-called R and RHMC algorithms), as provided in the MILC software package. We consider two degenerate flavors of light quarks in the staggered formulation, having in mind the case of finite-temperature QCD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]