Consistent Perturbative Fixed Point Calculations in QCD and Supersymmetric QCD.

Abstract

We suggest how to consistently calculate the anomalous dimension γ_{*} of the ψ[over ¯]ψ operator in finite order perturbation theory at an infrared fixed point for asymptotically free theories. If the n+1 loop beta function and n loop anomalous dimension are known, then γ_{*} can be calculated exactly and fully scheme independently in a Banks-Zaks expansion through O(Δ_{f}^{n}), where Δ_{f}=N[over ¯]_{f}-N_{f}, N_{f} is the number of flavors, and N[over ¯]_{f} is the number of flavors above which asymptotic freedom is lost. For a supersymmetric theory, the calculation preserves supersymmetry order by order in Δ_{f}. We then compute γ_{*} through O(Δ_{f}^{2}) for supersymmetric QCD in the dimensional reduction scheme and find that it matches the exact known result. We find that γ_{*} is astonishingly well described in perturbation theory already at the few loops level throughout the entire conformal window. We finally compute γ_{*} through O(Δ_{f}^{3}) for QCD and a variety of other nonsupersymmetric fermionic gauge theories. Small values of γ_{*} are observed for a large range of flavors.