  APE smearing the links in the irrelevant operators of clover fermions
(Fat-Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) fermions) provides significant improvement
in the condition number of the Hermitian-Dirac operator and gives rise to a
factor of two savings in computing the overlap operator. This report
investigates the effects of using a highly-improved definition of the lattice
field-strength tensor F_mu_nu in the fermion action, made possible through the
use of APE-smeared fat links in the construction of the irrelevant operators.
Spurious double-zero crossings in the spectral flow of the Hermitian-Wilson
Dirac operator associated with lattice artifacts at the scale of the lattice
spacing are removed with FLIC fermions composed with an O(a^4)-improved lattice
field strength tensor. Hence, FLIC-Overlap fermions provide an additional
benefit to the overlap formalism: a correct realization of topology in the
fermion sector on the lattice.
