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

TL;DR

This paper investigates the spectrum of SU(2) gauge theory with varying fermion flavors, revealing chiral symmetry breaking for fewer flavors and conformality at six flavors, with consistent anomalous dimension results.

Contribution

It provides a detailed spectral analysis across different flavor numbers, identifying the transition from chiral symmetry breaking to conformality in SU(2) gauge theory.

Findings

Chiral symmetry breaking observed for N_f ≤ 4

Infrared fixed point identified at N_f=6

Anomalous dimension results consistent with previous studies

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.