Staggered fermions and gauge field topology - art. no. 014501

Based on a large number of smearing steps, we classify SU(3) gauge field co nfigurations in different topological sectors. For each sector we compare t he exact analytical predictions for the microscopic Dirac operator spectrum of quenched staggered fermions. In all sectors we find perfect agreement w ith the predictions for the sector of topological charge zero, showing expl icitly that the smallest Dirac operator eigenvalues of staggered fermions a t presently realistic lattice couplings are insensitive to gauge field topo logy. On the smeared configurations, 4 nu eigenvalues clearly separate out from the rest on configurations of topological charge nu, and move towards zero in agreement with the index theorem.