Domain wall fermion zero modes on classical topological backgrounds

The domain wall approach to lattice fermions employs an additional dimension, in which gauge fields are merely replicated, to separate the chiral components of a Dirac fermion. It is known that, in the limit of infinite separation in this new dimension, domain wall fermions have exact zero modes, even 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 nonsmooth topological configurations and find that a fifth dimension of around ten sites is sufficient to clearly show zero mode effects. This small value for the extent of the fifth dimension indicates the practical utility of this technique for numerical simulations of QCD. {copyright} {ital 1999} {ital The American Physical Society}