T. Appelquist et al., PHASE-STRUCTURE OF AN SU(N) GAUGE-THEORY WITH N-F FLAVORS - ART. NO. 105017, Physical review. D. Particles and fields, 5810(10), 1998, pp. 5017
We investigate the chiral phase transition in SU(N) gauge theories as
the number of quark flavors, N-f, is varied. We argue that the transit
ion takes place at a large enough value of N-f so that it is governed
by the infrared fixed point of the beta function. We study the nature
of the phase transition analytically and numerically, and discuss the
spectrum of the theory as the critical value of N-f is approached in b
oth the symmetric and broken phases. Since the transition is governed
by a conformal fixed point, there are no light excitations on the symm
etric side. We extend previous work to include higher order effects by
developing a renormalization group estimate of the critical coupling.
[S0556-2821(98)00722-X].