Fate of the conformal fixed point with twelve massless fermions and SU(3) gauge group

Abstract: We report new results on the conformal properties of an important strongly coupled gauge theory, a building block of composite Higgs models beyond the Standard Model. With twelve massless fermions in the fundamental representation of the SU(3) color gauge group, an infrared fixed point of the $\beta$-function was recently reported in the theory (Cheng:2014jba) with uncertainty in the location of the critical gauge coupling inside the narrow $[ 6.0<g_*^2<6.4]$ interval and widely accepted since as the strongest evidence for a conformal fixed point and scale invariance in the theory with model-building implications. Using the exact same renormalization scheme as the previous study, we show that no fixed point of the $\beta$-function exists in the reported interval. Our findings eliminate the only seemingly credible evidence for conformal fixed point and scale invariance in the $N_f=12$ model whose infrared properties remain unresolved. The implications of the recently completed 5-loop QCD beta function for arbitrary flavor number are discussed with respect to our work.