Running Gluon Mass from Landau Gauge Lattice QCD Propagator

TL;DR

This paper investigates the gluon propagator in Landau gauge lattice QCD, exploring whether it can be modeled as a massive bosonic propagator with constant or momentum-dependent mass, and finds a consistent infrared mass scale.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the gluon propagator as a massive bosonic propagator, including scenarios with constant and momentum-dependent gluon masses, and compares lattice data with Dyson-Schwinger solutions.

Findings

Infrared data compatible with a massive propagator up to ~500 MeV

Constant infrared gluon mass around 648-723 MeV depending on data inclusion

Ultraviolet data incompatible with a constant mass model

Abstract

The interpretation of the Landau gauge lattice gluon propagator as a massive type bosonic propagator is investigated. Three different scenarios are discussed: i) an infrared constant gluon mass; ii) an ultraviolet constant gluon mass; iii) a momentum dependent mass. We find that the infrared data can be associated with a massive propagator up to momenta $\sim 500$ MeV, with a constant gluon mass of 723(11) MeV, if one excludes the zero momentum gluon propagator from the analysis, or 648(7) MeV, if the zero momentum gluon propagator is included in the data sets. The ultraviolet lattice data is not compatible with a massive type propagator with a constant mass. The scenario of a momentum dependent gluon mass gives a decreasing mass with the momentum, which vanishes in the deep ultraviolet region. Furthermore, we show that the functional forms used to describe the decoupling like solution of the Dyson-Schwinger equations are compatible with the lattice data with similar mass scales.