Domain wall fermions in quenched lattice QCD

We study the chiral properties and the validity of perturbation theory for domain wall fermions in quenched lattice QCD at β=6.0. The explicit chiral symmetry breaking term in the axial Ward-Takahashi identity is measured up to Nₛ=10, where Nₛ is the size of the fifth dimension, and its behavior seems consistent with an exponential decay in Nₛ within the limited range of Nₛ we explore. From the fact that the critical quark mass, at which the pion mass vanishes as in the case of the ordinary Wilson-type fermion, exists at finite Nₛ, we point out that this may be a signal of the parity broken phase and investigate the possible existence of such a phase in this model at finite Nₛ. The ρ and π meson decay constants obtained from the four-dimensional local currents with the one-loop renormalization factor show a good agreement with those obtained from the conserved currents.