How to extract information from Green's functions in Landau gauge

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to extract and analyze the infrared behavior of gluon and ghost propagators in Landau gauge from lattice simulations, providing new constraints and insights into confinement scenarios in Yang-Mills theories.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using propagator properties to improve extrapolation to infinite volume and relates complex propagators to simpler quantities, applied to large lattice data.

Findings

Results challenge common confinement scenarios

Provides bounds to relate propagators to simpler quantities

Analyzes large lattice data for SU(2) gauge theory

Abstract

The infrared behavior of gluon and ghost propagators offers a crucial test of confinement scenarios in Yang-Mills theories. A nonperturbative study of these propagators from first principles is possible in lattice simulations, but one must consider significantly large lattice sizes in order to approach the infrared limit. We propose constraints based on general properties of the propagators to gain control over the extrapolation of data to the infinite-volume limit. These bounds also provide a way to relate the propagators to simpler, more intuitive quantities. We apply our analysis to the case of pure SU(2) gauge theory in Landau gauge, using the largest lattice sizes to date. Our results seem to contradict commonly accepted confinement scenarios. We argue that it is not so.