Compact Lattice QED with Staggered Fermions and Chiral Symmetry Breaking

Different formulations of the $4d$ compact lattice QED with staggered fermions (standard Wilson and modified by suppression of lattice artifacts) are investigated by Monte Carlo simulations within the quenched approximation. We show that after suppressing lattice artifacts the system undergoes a phase transition from the Coulomb phase into a presumably weakly chirally broken phase only at (unphysical) negative $\beta$--values.