  Domain-wall fermions preserve chiral symmetry up to terms that decrease
exponentially when the lattice size in the fifth dimension is taken to
infinity. The associated rates of convergence are given by the low-lying
eigenvalues of a simple local operator in four dimensions. These can be
computed using the Ritz functional technique and it turns out that the
convergence tends to be extremely slow in the range of lattice spacings
relevant to large-volume numerical simulations of lattice QCD. Two methods to
improve on this situation are discussed.
