The physics of eight flavours

Abstract

We study Quantum Chromodynamics with eight flavours by use of lattice simulations and present evidence that the theory still breaks chiral symmetry in the zero temperature, continuum limit. This confirms that the lower end of the conformal window of QCD lies above Nf = 8.

Comments: 19 pages, 7 figures; added a number of relevant references and comments to introduction, enhanced captions for figures 6 and 7, corrected typos and minor lapses of style