Exponential error reduction for glueball calculations using a two-level algorithm in pure gauge theory

This study explores the application of a two-level algorithm to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio of glueball calculations in four-dimensional SU(3) pure gauge theory. Our findings demonstrate that the statistical errors exhibit an exponential reduction, enabling reliable extraction of effective masses at distances where current standard methods would demand exponentially more samples. However, at shorter distances, standard methods prove more efficient due to a saturation of the variance reduction using the multilevel method. We discuss the physical distance at which the multilevel sampling is expected to outperform the standard algorithm, supported by numerical evidence across different lattice spacings and glueball channels. Additionally, we construct a variational basis comprising 35 Wilson loops up to length 12 and 5 smearing sizes each, presenting results for the first state in the spectrum for the scalar, pseudoscalar, and tensor channels. Published by the American Physical Society 2024