Passing through the ‘chiral limit’ in quenched QCD with Wilson fermions

Abstract We investigate the limit of vanishing quark mass in quenched lattice QCD with unimproved Wilson fermions at β = 6.0. Exploiting the correlations of propagators at different time slices we extract pion masses extremely close to the ‘chiral limit’, despite the presence of ‘exceptional configurations’. With this at hand, the existence of quenched chiral logarithms can be demonstrated, provided, finite size effects are small. With reference to the phase diagram proposed by Aoki [1] also the range κ > κ c is investigated. The width of a potential parity-flavor violating phase can, if at all, hardly be resolved.