No Arabic abstract
With the introduction of a spectral representation, the Schwinger-Dyson equation (SDE) for the fermion propagator is formulated in Minkowski space in QED. After imposing the on-shell renormalization conditions, analytic solutions for the fermion propagator spectral functions are obtained in four dimensions with a renormalizable version of the Gauge Technique anzatz for the fermion-photon vertex in the quenched approximation in the Landau gauge. Despite the limitations of this model, having an explicit solution provides a guiding example of the fermion propagator with the correct analytic structure. The Pad{e} approximation for the spectral functions is also investigated.
We solve the Minkowski-space Schwinger-Dyson equation (SDE) for the fermion propagator in quantum electrodynamics (QED) with massive photons. Specifically, we work in the quenched approximation within the rainbow-ladder truncation. Loop-divergences are regularized by the Pauli-Villars regularization. With moderately strong fermion-photon coupling, we find that the analytic structure of the fermion propagator consists of an on-shell pole and branch-cuts located in the timelike region. Such structures are consistent with the direct solution of the fermion propagator as functions of the complex momentum. Our method paves the way towards the calculation of the Minkowski-space Bethe-Salpeter amplitude using dressed fermion propagator.
Any practical application of the Schwinger-Dyson equations to the study of $n$-point Greens functions of a field theory requires truncations, the best known being finite order perturbation theory. Strong coupling studies require a different approach. In the case of QED, gauge covariance is a powerful constraint. By using a spectral representation for the massive fermion propagator in QED, we are able to show that the constraints imposed by the Landau-Khalatnikov-Fradkin transformations are linear operations on the spectral densities. Here we formally define these group operations and show with a couple of examples how in practice they provide a straightforward way to test the gauge covariance of any viable truncation of the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the fermion 2-point function.
The gluon propagator plays a central role in determining the dynamics of QCD. In this work we demonstrate for BRST quantised QCD that the Dyson-Schwinger equation imposes significant analytic constraints on the structure of this propagator. In particular, we find that these constraints control the appearance of massless components in the gluon spectral density.
We solve the Dyson--Schwinger equation for the quark propagator in a model with singular infrared behavior for the gluon propagator. We require that the solutions, easily found in configuration space, be tempered distributions and thus have Fourier transforms. This severely limits the boundary conditions that the solutions may satisify. The sign of the dimensionful parameter that characterizes the model gluon propagator can be either positive or negative. If the sign is negative, we find a unique solution. It is singular at the origin in momentum space, falls off like $1/p^2$ as $p^2rightarrow +/-infty$, and it is truly nonperturbative in that it is singular in the limit that the gluon--quark interaction approaches zero. If the sign of the gluon propagator coefficient is positive, we find solutions that are, in a sense that we exhibit, unconstrained linear combinations of advanced and retarded propagators. These solutions are singular at the origin in momentum space, fall off like $1/p^2$ asympotically, exhibit ``resonant--like behavior at the position of the bare mass of the quark when the mass is large compared to the dimensionful interaction parameter in the gluon propagator model, and smoothly approach a linear combination of free--quark, advanced and retarded two--point functions in the limit that the interaction approaches zero. In this sense, these solutions behave in an increasingly ``particle--like manner as the quark becomes heavy. The Feynman propagator and the Wightman function are not tempered distributions and therefore are not acceptable solutions to the Schwinger--Dyson equation in our model. On this basis we advance several arguments to show that the Fourier--transformable solutions we find are consistent with quark confinement, even though they have singularities on the
In view of the properties of mesons in hot strongly interacting matter the properties of the solutions of the truncated Dyson-Schwinger equation for the quark propagator at finite temperatures within the rainbow-ladder approximation are analysed in some detail. In Euclidean space within the Matsubara imaginary time formalism the quark propagator is not longer a O(4) symmetric function and possesses a discrete spectra of the fourth component of the momentum. This makes the treatment of the Dyson-Schwinger and Bethe-Salpeter equations conceptually different from the vacuum and technically much more involved. The question whether the interaction kernel known from vacuum calculations can be applied at finite temperatures remains still open. We find that, at low temperatures, the model interaction with vacuum parameters provides a reasonable description of the quark propagator, while at temperatures higher than a certain critical value $T_c$ the interaction requires stringent modifications. The general properties of the quark propagator at finite temperatures can be inferred from lattice QCD calculations. We argue that, to achieve a reasonable agreement of the model calculations with that from lattice QCD, the kernel is to be modified in such a way as to screen the infra-red part of the interaction at temperatures larger than $T_c$. For this, we analyse the solutions of the truncated Dyson-Schwinger equation with existing interaction kernels in a large temperature range with particular attention on high temperatures in order to find hints to an adequate temperature dependence of the interaction kernel to be further implemented in to the Bethe-Salpeter equation for mesons. This will allow to investigate the possible in medium modifications of the meson properties as well as the conditions of quark deconfinement in hot matter.