In lattice field theory, staggered fermions (also known as Kogut–Susskind fermions) are a fermion discretization that reduces the number of fermion doublers from sixteen to four. They are one of the fastest lattice fermions when it comes to simulations and they also possess some nice features such as a remnant chiral symmetry, making them very popular in lattice QCD calculations. Staggered fermions were first formulated by John Kogut and Leonard Susskind in 1975 and were later found to be equivalent to the discretized version of the Dirac–Kähler fermion.