出版社：SISSA, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati
摘要：I give a status report on the validity of the so-called .fourth-root trick., i.e. the procedure of
representing the determinant for a single fermion by the fourth root of the staggered fermion
determinant. This has been used by the MILC collaboration to create a large ensemble of lattices
using which many quantities of physical interest have been and are being calculated. It is also
used extensively in studies of QCD thermodynamics. The main question is whether the theory
so dened has the correct continuum limit. There has been signicant recent progress towards
answering this question. After recalling the issue, and putting it into a broader context of results
from statistical mechanics, I critically review the new work. I also address the related issue of
the impact of treating valence and sea quarks differently in rooted simulations, discuss whether
rooted simulations at nite temperature and density are subject to additional concerns, and briey
update results for quark masses using the MILC congurations. An answer to the question in the
title is proposed in the summary.
