Taste breaking effects in scalar meson correlators

As a consistency check of the staggered-fermion fourth-root approximation, we analyze the a_0 and f_0 correlators, including the effects of two-meson taste-multiplet intermediate states. Rooted staggered chiral perturbation theory describes the contributions from the pseudoscalar taste multiplets in terms of only a few low energy constants, which have all been previously determined by the MILC collaboration. In previous work one of us (Prelovsek) showed that the two-meson ``bubble'' contributions could explain the observed anomalies in the lattice data for the isovector a_0 channel. In the present work we extend this analysis to the f_0 channel. On a MILC collaboration lattice ensemble at 0.12 fm with 2+1 flavors of Asqtad-improved staggered fermions, we have made new measurements of correlators in both channels for a variety of momenta. A fit to these correlators gives low energy constants that are reasonably consistent with previous determinations by the MILC collaboration.}