We report on an exploratory study of domain wall fermions (DWF) as a lattice
regularisation for heavy quarks. Within the framework of quenched QCD with the
tree-level improved Symanzik gauge action we identify the DWF parameters which
minimise discretisation effects. We find the corresponding effective 4d
overlap operator to be exponentially local, independent of the quark mass. We
determine a maximum bare heavy quark mass of amh≈0.4, below which the
approximate chiral symmetry and O(a)-improvement of DWF are sustained. This
threshold appears to be largely independent of the lattice spacing. Based on
these findings, we carried out a detailed scaling study for the heavy-strange
meson dispersion relation and decay constant on four ensembles with lattice
spacings in the range 2.0−5.7GeV. We observe very mild a2
scaling towards the continuum limit. Our findings establish a sound basis for
heavy DWF in dynamical simulations of lattice QCD with relevance to Standard
Model phenomenology.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure