Light Quark Simulations With FLIC Fermions
  Hadron masses are calculated in quenched lattice QCD in order to probe the scaling behavior of a novel fat-link clover fermion action in which only the irrelevant operators of the fermion action are constructed using APE-smeared links. Light quark masses corresponding to an m_pi / m_rho ratio of 0.35 are considered to assess the exceptional configuration problem of clover-fermion actions. This Fat-Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) fermion action provides scaling which is superior to mean-field improvement and offers advantages over nonperturbative improvement, including reduced exceptional configurations. 
J.M.Zanotti, D.B.Leinweber, W.Melnitchouk, A.G.Williams and J.B.Zhang