Conformal or Confining

Abstract

We present a lattice study of the phase transitions at zero and nonzero temperature for the $SU(3)$ gauge theory with a varying number of flavours $N_f$ in the fundamental representation of the gauge group. We show that all results are consistent with a lower edge of the conformal window between $N_f=8$ and $N_f=6$. A lower edge in this interval is in remarkable agreement with perturbation theory and recent large-$N$ arguments. .

5 pages, 5 figures. New results added, conclusions strengthened. Scalar glueball now treated in a separate article

References in corpus (3)

• The large-N Yang-Mills S-matrix is ultraviolet finite, but the large-N QCD S-matrix is only renormalizable
• Asymptotic Freedom versus Open/Closed Duality in Large-N QCD
• Yang-Mills mass gap, Floer homology, glueball spectrum, and conformal window in large-N QCD

Cited by in corpus (5)

• RG Flows and Bifurcations
• Anomalous Dimensions of Conformal Baryons
• The scalar glueball operator, the a-theorem, and the onset of conformality
• Beyond the Standard Model: Charting Fundamental Interactions via Lattice Simulations
• Studies of Conformal Behavior in Strongly Interacting Quantum Field Theories