Effects of topology in the Dirac spectrum of staggered fermions

We compare the lower edge spectral fluctuations of the staggered lattice Di rac operator for the Schwinger model with the predictions of chiral random matrix theory (chRMT). We verify their range of applicability, checking in particular the role of non-trivial topological sectors and the flavor symme try of the staggered fermions for finite lattice spacing. Approaching the c ontinuum limit we indeed find clear signals for topological modes in the ei genvalue spectrum. These findings indicate problems in the verification of the chRMT predictions. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All righ ts reserved.