We extend a previous improved action study of the Landau gauge gluon propagator, by using a variety of lattices with spacings from a = 0.17 to 0.41 fm, to more fully explore finite volume and discretization effects. We also extend a previously used technique for minimizing lattice artifacts, the appropriate choice of momentum variable or "kinematic correction", by considering it more generally as a "tree-level correction". We demonstrate that by using tree-level correction, determined by the tree-level behavior of the action being considered, it is possible to obtain scaling behavior over a very wide range of momenta and lattice spacings. This makes it possible to explore the infinite volume and continuum limits of the Landau-gauge gluon propagator.

The first calculation of the gluon propagator using an O(a 2 ) improved action with the corresponding O(a 2 ) improved Landau gauge fixing condition is presented. The gluon propagator obtained from the improved action and improved Landau gauge condition is compared with earlier unimproved results on similar physical lattice volumes of 3.2 3 × 6.4 fm 4 . We find agreement between the improved propagator calculated on a coarse lattice with lattice spacing a = 0.35 fm and the unimproved propagator calculated on a fine lattice with spacing a = 0.10 fm. This motivates us to calculate the gluon propagator on a coarse large-volume lattice 5.6 3 × 11.2 fm 4 . The infrared behavior of previous studies is confirmed in this work. The gluon propagator is enhanced at intermediate momenta and suppressed at infrared momenta. Therefore the observed infrared suppression of the Landau gauge gluon propagator is not a finite volume effect.

We present first results for the masses of positive and negative parity excited baryons calculated in lattice QCD using an O(a 2 )-improved gluon action and a fat-link irrelevant clover (FLIC) fermion action in which only the irrelevant operators are constructed with APE-smeared links. The results are in agreement with earlier calculations of N * resonances using improved actions and exhibit a clear mass splitting between the nucleon and its chiral partner. An correlation matrix analysis reveals two low-lying J P = 1 2 − states with a small mass splitting. The study of different Λ interpolating fields suggests a similar splitting between the lowest two Λ 1 2 − octet states. However, the empirical mass suppression of the Λ * (1405) is not evident in these quenched QCD simulations, suggesting a potentially important role for the meson cloud of the Λ * (1405) and/or a need for more exotic interpolating fields.

The properties of the quark propagator in Landau gauge in quenched QCD are examined for the overlap quark action. The overlap quark action satisfies the Ginsparg-Wilson relation and as such provides an exact lattice realization of chiral symmetry. This in turn implies that the quark action is free of O(a) errors. We present results using the standard Wilson fermion kernel in the overlap formalism on a 12 3 × 24 lattice at a spacing of 0.125 fm. We obtain the nonperturbative momentum-dependent wavefunction renormalization function Z(p) and the nonperturbative mass function M (p) for a variety of bare masses. We perform a simple extrapolation to the chiral limit for these functions. We clearly observe the dynamically generated infrared mass and confirm the qualitative behavior found for the Landau gauge quark propagator in earlier studies. We attempt to extract the quark condensate from the asymptotic behavior of the mass function in the chiral limit.

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