Simulating the vacuum properties of QCD with dynamical quarks

The vacuum properties of lattice QCD with staggered quarks are investigated by an efficient simulation method. I present data for the quark condensate with flavor number $N_f=0,1,2,3,4$ and many quark masses, including the vacuum energy in the chiral limit. Obvious sea quark effects are observed in some parameter space. I also describe a mechanism to understand this and a formula relating the chiral condensate and zero modes.