Scaling and eigenmode tests of the improved fat clover action

We test a recently proposed improved lattice-fermion action, the fat link clover action, examining indicators of pathological small-quark-mass lattice artifacts (‘‘exceptional configurations'') on quenched lattices of spacing 0.12 fm and studying scaling properties of the light hadron spectrum for lattice spacing a=0.09 and 0.16 fm. We show that the action apparently has fewer problems with pathological lattice artifacts than the conventional nonperturbatively improved clover action and its spectrum scales just as well.