Hadron Masses From Novel Fat-Link Fermion Actions

The hadron mass spectrum is calculated in lattice QCD using a novel fat-link clover fermion action in which only the irrelevant operators in the fermion action are constructed using smeared links. The simulations are performed on a 16{sup 3} x 32 lattice with a lattice spacing of a=0.125 fm. We compare actions with n=4 and 12 smearing sweeps with a smearing fraction of 0.7. The n=4 Fat-Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) action provides scaling which is superior to mean-field improvement, and offers advantages over nonperturbative 0(a) improvement, including a reduced exceptional configuration problem