ar X iv : 0 71 0 . 04 25 v 1 [ he p - la t ] 2 O ct 2 00 7 Oscillatory terms in the domain wall transfer matrix

We study the transfer matrix for domain wall fermions to understand the origin and significance of oscillatory contributions to hadron correlation functions that arise for M >1. For a free particle in one space, one time, and one flavor dimension, the eigenmodes of the one-body operator appearing in the transfer matrix are calculated, and the role of the negative eigenmodes arising when M > 1 is studied. In the case of three space dimensions, oscillatory behavior for hadron correlation functions in QCD is shown to emerge for free fermions when M exceeds 1, and to increase with increasing M. Analogous behavior is observed for domain wall fermions on HYP smeared MILC lattices, and a procedure is demonstrated for subtracting oscillating terms from physical observables.