https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1619-0
Letter
A test on analytic continuation of thermal imaginary-time data
1
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, SUNY, Stony Brook, 11794, NY, USA
2
Faculty of Physics, University of Bielefeld, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany
b
laine@physik.uni-bielefeld.de
Received:
3
February
2011
Revised:
8
March
2011
Published online:
9
April
2011
Some time ago, Cuniberti et al. have proposed a novel method for analytically continuing thermal imaginary-time correlators to real time, which requires no model input and should be applicable with finite-precision data as well. Given that these assertions go against common wisdom, we report on a naive test of the method with an idealized example. We do encounter two problems, which we spell out in detail; this implies that systematic errors are difficult to quantify. On a more positive note, the method is simple to implement and allows for an empirical recipe by which a reasonable qualitative estimate for some transport coefficient may be obtained, if statistical errors of an ultraviolet-subtracted imaginary-time measurement can be reduced to roughly below the per mille level.
Key words: Spectral Function / Analytic Continuation / Heavy Quark / High Energy Phys / Fourier Mode
© The Author(s) 2011
Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
