The large-mass regime of confining but nearly conformal gauge theories

Understand

We apply a recently developed dilaton-pion effective field theory for asymptotically free gauge theories near the conformal window to the $SU(3)$ gauge theory with $N_f=8$ fermions in the fundamental representation.

• Numerical data for this theory suggest the existence of a large-mass regime, where the fermion mass is not small but nevertheless the effective theory is applicable because of the parametric proximity of the conformal window.
• In this regime, we find that the mass dependence of hadronic quantities is similar to that of a a mass-deformed conformal theory, so that distinguishing infrared conformality from confinement requires the study of subleading effects.