Topology and glueballs in SU(7) Yang-Mills with open boundary conditions

Understand

It is well known that the topology of gauge configurations generated in a Markov Monte-Carlo chain freezes as the continuum limit is approached.

• The corresponding autocorrelation time increases exponentially with the inverse lattice spacing, affecting the ergodicity of the simulation.
• In SU(N) gauge theories for large N this problem sets in at much coarser lattice spacings than for N=3.
• This means that its systematics can be studied on lattices that are smaller in terms of the number of lattice sites.