Chiral Ward identities for Dirac eigenmodes with staggered fermions

We study chiral properties of eigenvalue spectrum for staggered quarks. We present a new method to identify would-be zero modes and nonzero modes using their symmetry and chiral properties. Here, we review the traditional method with HYP improved staggered quarks, and extend it to a completely new method which uses the chiral Ward identities and leakage patterns to achieve the goal.