No Arabic abstract
We present a generalized theoretical framework for dealing with the important issue of dynamical mass generation in Yang-Mills theories, and, in particular, with the infrared finiteness of the gluon propagators, observed in a multitude of recent lattice simulations. Our analysis is manifestly gauge-invariant, in the sense that it preserves the transversality of the gluon self-energy, and gauge-independent, given that the conclusions do not depend on the choice of the gauge-fixing parameter within the linear covariant gauges. The central construction relies crucially on the subtle interplay between the Abelian Ward identities satisfied by the nonperturbative vertices and a special integral identity that enforces a vast number of seagull cancellations among the one- and two-loop dressed diagrams of the gluon Schwinger-Dyson equation. The key result of these considerations is that the gluon propagator remains rigorously massless, provided that the vertices do not contain (dynamical) massless poles. When such poles are incorporated into the vertices, under the pivotal requirement of respecting the gauge symmetry of the theory, the terms comprising the Ward identities conspire in such a way as to still enforce the total annihilation of all quadratic divergences, inducing, at the same time, residual contributions that account for the saturation of gluon propagators in the deep infrared.
We derive the form of the infrared gluon propagator by proving a mapping in the infrared of the quantum Yang-Mills and $lambdaphi^4$ theories. The equivalence is complete at a classical level. But while at a quantum level, the correspondence is spoiled by quantum fluctuations in the ultraviolet limit, we prove that it holds in the infrared where the coupling constant happens to be very large. The infrared propagator is then obtained from the quantum field theory of the scalar field producing a full spectrum. The results are in fully agreement with recent lattice computations. We get a finite propagator at zero momentum, the ghost propagator going to infinity as $1/p^{2+2kappa}$ with $kappa=0$.
We present novel lattice results for the form factors of the quenched three-gluon vertex of QCD, in two special kinematic configurations that depend on a single momentum scale. We consider three form factors, two associated with a classical tensor structure and one without tree-level counterpart, exhibiting markedly different infrared behaviors. Specifically, while the former display the typical suppression driven by a negative logarithmic singularity at the origin, the latter saturates at a small negative constant. These exceptional features are analyzed within the Schwinger-Dyson framework, with the aid of special relations obtained from the Slavnov-Taylor identities of the theory. The emerging picture of the underlying dynamics is thoroughly corroborated by the lattice results, both qualitatively as well as quantitatively.
The Dyson-Schwinger quark equation is solved for the quark-gluon vertex using the most recent lattice data available in the Landau gauge for the quark, gluon and ghost propagators, the full set of longitudinal tensor structures in the Ball-Chiu vertex, taking into account a recently derived normalisation for a quark-ghost kernel form factors and the gluon contribution for the tree level quark-gluon vertex identified on a recent study of the lattice soft gluon limit. A solution for the inverse problem is computed after the Tikhonov linear regularisation of the integral equation, that implies solving a modified Dyson-Schwinger equation. We get longitudinal form factors that are strongly enhanced at the infrared region, deviate significantly from the tree level results for quark and gluon momentum below 2 GeV and at higher momentum approach their perturbative values. The computed quark-gluon vertex favours kinematical configurations where the quark momentum $p$ and the gluon momentum $q$ are small and parallel. Further, the quark-gluon vertex is dominated by the form factors associated to the tree level vertex $gamma_mu$ and to the operator $2 , p_mu + q_mu$. The higher rank tensor structures provide small contributions to the vertex.
We present a detailed analysis of the kinetic and mass terms associated with the Landau gauge gluon propagator in the presence of dynamical quarks, and a comprehensive dynamical study of certain special kinematic limits of the three-gluon vertex. Our approach capitalizes on results from recent lattice simulations with (2+1) domain wall fermions, a novel nonlinear treatment of the gluon mass equation, and the nonperturbative reconstruction of the longitudinal three-gluon vertex from its fundamental Slavnov-Taylor identities. Particular emphasis is placed on the persistence of the suppression displayed by certain combinations of the vertex form factors at intermediate and low momenta, already known from numerous pure Yang-Mills studies. One of our central findings is that the inclusion of dynamical quarks moderates the intensity of this phenomenon only mildly, leaving the asymptotic low-momentum behavior unaltered, but displaces the characteristic zero crossing deeper into the infrared region. In addition, the effect of the three-gluon vertex is explored at the level of the renormalization-group invariant combination corresponding to the effective gauge coupling, whose size is considerably reduced with respect to its counterpart obtained from the ghost-gluon vertex. The main upshot of the above considerations is the further confirmation of the tightly interwoven dynamics between the two- and three-point sectors of QCD.
Starting from the lattice Landau gauge gluon and ghost propagator data we use a sequence of Pade approximants, identify the poles and zeros for each approximant and map them into the analytic structure of the propagators. For the Landau gauge gluon propagator the Pade analysis identifies a pair of complex conjugate poles and a branch cut along the negative real axis of the Euclidean $p^2$ momenta. For the Landau gauge ghost propagator the Pade analysis shows a single pole at $p^2 = 0$ and a branch cut also along the negative real axis of the Euclidean $p^2$ momenta. The method gives precise estimates for the gluon complex poles, that agree well with other estimates found in the literature. For the branch cut the Pade analysis gives, at least, a rough estimate of the corresponding branch point.