From chiral symmetry breaking to conformality in SU(2) gauge theory

Abstract

We compute the spectrum of SU(2) gauge theory with two, four or six Dirac fermions in the fundamental representation of the gauge group. We investigate the scaling of the meson masses as a function of the quark mass when approaching the chiral limit. We find behavior compatible with the usual pattern of chiral symmetry breaking at $N_f\le 4$ and with the existence of an infrared fixed point at $N_f=6$. In the six flavor case we determine the anomalous dimension of the quark mass operator from the spectrum and find results fully consistent with earlier analyses.