Confined gluon from Minkowski space continuation of PT-BFM SDE solution

TL;DR

This paper analytically continues the PT-BFM gluon propagator from Euclidean to Minkowski space, revealing complex spectral features and implications for gluon mass generation in QCD.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical Minkowski continuation of the PT-BFM gluon propagator, uncovering unexpected spectral behaviors and their dependence on Schwinger coupling strength.

Findings

Spectral function exhibits multiple singularities beyond a simple delta function.

Stronger coupling yields multiple maxima and minima at the scale Λ.

Weak coupling shows two narrow peaks corresponding to particle and ghost excitations.

Abstract

Recent lattice studies exhibit infrared finite effective QCD charges. Corresponding gluon propagator in Landau gauge is finite and nonzero, suggesting a mechanism of dynamical gluon mass generation is in the operation. In this paper, the analytical continuation of the Euclidean (spacelike) Pinch Technique-Background Field Method (PT-BFM) solution of Schwinger-Dyson equation for gluon propagator to the timelike region of $q^2$ is found. We found the continuation numerically showing good agreement with a generalized Lehman representation for small Schwinger coupling. The associate non-positive spectral function has an unexpected behavior. Albeit infrared Euclidean space solution naively suggests like single scale "massive" propagator, the obtained spectrum of gluon propagator does not correspond to the delta function at single scale $q=m$, instead more possible singularities are generated. The pattern depends on the details of assumed Schwinger mechanism: for stronger coupling there are few maxima and minima which appear at the scale $\Lambda$, while for perturbatively small Schwinger coupling the spectral function shows up two narrow peaks: particle and ghost excitation, which have mutually opposite signs.