Quark spectra and light hadron phenomenology from overlap fermions with improved gauge field action

We present first results from a simulation of quenched overlap fermions with improved gauge field action. Among the quantities we study are the spectral properties of the overlap operator, the chiral condensate and topological charge, quark and hadron masses, and selected nucleon matrix elements. To make contact with continuum physics, we compute the renormalization constants of quark bilinear operators in perturbation theory and beyond.