Utilising optimised operators and distillation to extract scattering phase shifts

Abstract: In this investigation, we examine how the precision of energy spectra and scattering phase shifts, extracted in lattice QCD, depend upon the degree of distillation type smearing. We use the variational method to extract energy spectra for the isospin-1, $J^{PC}=1^{--}$ channel and use the L\"{u}scher method to compute scattering amplitudes, relevant for the $\rho$ resonance, in $\pi\pi$ elastic scattering. Optimised interpolating operators for a single ground state pion are constructed and these are used to construct two pion operators. Calculations are performed on an anisotropic lattice with a pion mass of $m_\pi=236$ MeV. We provide a comprehensive comparison of energy spectra and scattering phase shifts across distillation spaces of varying rank.