Origin of Confining Force

TL;DR

This paper provides exact calculations linking the confining force in QCD to zero-modes of the Faddeev-Popov operator, showing ghost propagator enhancement on the Gribov horizon and deriving inequalities indicating divergence of the color-Coulomb potential at low momentum.

Contribution

It introduces a new analytic framework connecting the confining force to the spectral properties of the Faddeev-Popov operator and proposes a novel numerical gauge fixing method.

Findings

Ghost propagator is enhanced at low momentum on the Gribov horizon.

Derived inequality shows divergence of the color-Coulomb potential at low momentum.

Spectral decomposition relates eigenvalues of FP operator to confinement mechanisms.

Abstract

In this article we present exact calculations that substantiate a clear picture relating the confining force of QCD to the zero-modes of the Faddeev-Popov (FP) operator $\mathcal{M}(A) = - \partial \cdot D(A)$. This is done in two steps. First we calculate the spectral decomposition of the FP operator and show that the ghost propagator $\mathcal{G}(k; A) = \langle \vec{k}| \mathcal{M}^{-1}(A) | \vec{k} \rangle$ in an external gauge potential $A$ is enhanced at low $k$ in Fourier space for configurations $A$ on the Gribov horizon. This results from the new formula in the low-$k$ regime $\mathcal{G}^{ab}(k,A) = \delta^{ab} \lambda_{|\vec{k}|}^{-1}(gA)$, where $\lambda_{|\vec{k}|}(gA)$ is the eigenvalue of the FP operator that emerges from $\lambda_{|\vec{k}|}(0) = \vec{k}^2$ at $A$ = 0. Next we derive a strict inequality signaling the divergence of the color-Coulomb potential at low momentum $k$ namely, $\widetilde{\mathcal{V}}(k) \geq k^2 G^2(k)$ for $k \to 0$, where $\widetilde{\mathcal{V}}(k)$ is the Fourier transform of the color-Coulomb potential $\mathcal{V}(r)$ and $G(k)$ is the ghost propagator in momentum space. The first result holds in the Landau and Coulomb gauges, whereas the second holds in the Coulomb gauge only. We propose a new numerical lattice gauge fixing that should be closer to the present analytic approach than other numerical gauges.