Renormalization-group analysis of the validity of staggered-fermion QCD with the fourth-root recipe

I develop a renormalization-group blocking framework for lattice QCD with staggered fermions. Under plausible, and testable assumptions, I then argue that the fourth-root recipe used in numerical simulations is valid in the continuum limit. The taste-symmetry violating terms, which give rise to nonlocal effects in the fourth-root theory when the lattice spacing is nonzero, vanish in the continuum limit. A key role is played by reweighted theories that are local and renormalizable on the one hand, and that approximate the fourth-root theory better and better as the continuum limit is approached on the other hand.