The general method for treating non-Gaussian wave functionals in the Hamiltonian formulation of a quantum field theory, which was previously proposed and developed for Yang--Mills theory in Coulomb gauge, is generalized to full QCD. For this purpose
the quark part of the QCD vacuum wave functional is expressed in the basis of coherent fermion states, which are defined in term of Grassmann variables. Our variational ansatz for the QCD vacuum wave functional is assumed to be given by exponentials of polynomials in the occurring fields and, furthermore, contains an explicit coupling of the quarks to the gluons. Exploiting Dyson--Schwinger equation techniques, we express the various $n$-point functions, which are required for the expectation values of observables like the Hamiltonian, in terms of the variational kernels of our trial ansatz. Finally the equations of motion for these variational kernels are derived by minimizing the energy density.
The canonical recursive Dyson--Schwinger equations for the three-gluon and ghost-gluon vertices are solved numerically. The employed truncation includes several previously neglected diagrams and includes back-coupling effects. We find an infrared fin
ite ghost-gluon vertex and an infrared diverging three-gluon vertex. We also compare our results with those obtained in previous calculations, where bare vertices were used in the loop diagrams.
We study the static gluon and quark propagator of the Hamiltonian approach to Quantum Chromodynamics in Coulomb gauge in one-loop Rayleigh--Schrodinger perturbation theory. We show that the results agree with the equal-time limit of the four-dimensio
nal propagators evaluated in the functional integral (Lagrangian) approach.
I briefly review results obtained within the variational Hamiltonian approach to Yang-Mills theory in Coulomb gauge and confront them with recent lattice data. The variational approach is extended to non-Gaussian wave functionals including three- and
four-gluon kernels in the exponential of the vacuum wave functional and used to calculate the three-gluon vertex. A new functional renormalization group flow equation for Hamiltonian Yang--Mills theory in Coulomb gauge is solved for the gluon and ghost propagator under the assumption of ghost dominance. The results are compared to those obtained in the variational approach.
