Estimating Xtop lattice artifacts from flowed SU(2) calorons

Lattice computations of the high-temperature topological susceptibility of QCD receive lattice-spacing corrections and suffer from systematics arising from the type and depth of gradient flow. We study the lattice spacing corrections to Xtop semi-analytically by exploring the behavior of discretized Harrington–Shepard calorons under the action of different forms of gradient flow. From our study we conclude that Nτ = 6 is definitely too small of a time extent to study the theory at temperatures of order 4 Tc and we explore how the amount of gradient flow influences the continuum extrapolation.