Study of the conformal region of the SU(3) gauge theory with domain-wall fermions

Abstract

We investigate the phase structure of the SU(3) gauge theory with $N_f=8$ by numerical simulations employing the massless Domain-Wall fermions.Our aim is to study directly the massless quark region, since it is the most important region to clarify the properties of conformal theories. When the number of flavor is within the conformal window, it is claimed recently with Wilson quarks that there is the conformal region at the small quark mass region in the parameter space in addition to the confining phase and the deconfining phase. We study the properties of the conformal region investing the spatial Polyakov loops and the temporal meson propagators. Our data imply that there is the conformal region, and a phase transition between the confining phase and the conformal region takes place. These results are consistent with the claim that the conformal window is between $7$ and $16$. Progress reports on other related studies are also presented.