Variants of fattening and flavor symmetry restoration - art. no. 054503

We study the effects of different "fat link" actions for Kogut-Susskind qua rks on flavor symmetry breaking. Our method is mostly empirical-we compute the pion spectrum with different Valence quark actions on common sets of sa mple lattices. Different actions are compared, as best we can, at equivalen t physical points. We find significant reductions in flavor symmetry breaki ng relative to the conventional or to the "link plus staple" actions, with a reasonable cost in computer time. We also develop and test a scheme for a pproximate unitarization of the fat links. While our tests have concentrate d on the valence quark action, our results will be useful in designing simu lations with dynamical quarks. [S0556-2821(99)03915-6].