# The SF running coupling with four flavours of
staggered quarks

**Source**: https://www.maths.tcd.ie/report_series/abstracts/tcdm0713.html
**Parent**: https://www.maths.tcd.ie/research/papers/

**The SF running coupling with four flavours of
staggered quarks**

In order to study the running coupling in four-flavour QCD,
we review the set-up of the Schrödinger functional (SF) with
staggered quarks. Staggered quarks require lattices which,
in the usual counting, have even spatial lattice extent L/a
while the time extent T /a must be odd. Set- ting T = L is
therefore only possible up to O(a), which introduces
different cutoff effects already in the pure gauge theory.
We re-define the SF such as to cope with this situation and
determine the corresponding classical background field. A
perturbative calculation yields the coefficient of the pure
gauge O(a) boundary counterterm to one-loop order.