Domain wall fermion zero modes on classical topological backgrounds - art.no. 054508

The domain wall approach to lattice fermions employs an additional dimensio n, in which gauge fields are merely replicated, to separate the chiral comp onents of a Dirac fermion. It is known that, in the limit of infinite separ ation in this new dimension, domain wall fermions have exact zero modes, ev en for gauge fields which are not smooth. We explore the effects of finite extent in the fifth dimension on the zero modes for both smooth and nonsmoo th topological configurations and find that a fifth dimension of around ten sites is sufficient to clearly show zero mode effects. This small value fo r the extent of the fifth dimension indicates the practical utility of this technique for numerical simulations of QCD. [S0556-2821(99)01803-1].