Quark propagator in the Landau gauge

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Landau gauge quark propagator using improved lattice actions, introduces a tree-level correction method, and finds results consistent with phenomenological models, especially regarding the infrared quark mass.

Contribution

It introduces a general tree-level correction method for lattice quark propagators and compares different improved definitions to enhance reliability at medium to high momenta.

Findings

The improved propagators provide a reliable description up to medium momenta.

The infrared quark mass extrapolated to the chiral limit is approximately 298 MeV.

The results align qualitatively with quark model expectations.

Abstract

The Landau gauge quark propagator in momentum space is investigated using the O(a)-improved Sheikholeslami--Wohlert (SW) quark action with a tree-level mean-field improved coefficient c_sw. We have studied the unimproved definition of the quark propagator, as well as two different tree-level O(a)-improved propagators. The ultraviolet behavior of the free lattice propagator is studied for each of these in order to establish which of them provides the most reliable description of the quark propagator up to the medium momentum regime. A general method of tree-level correction is introduced. This exploits asymptotic freedom and removes much of the trivial lattice artifacts at medium to high momenta. We obtain results for the quark propagator which are qualitatively similar to those typically used in quark models. A simple extrapolation of the infrared quark mass M(p^2=0) to the chiral limit gives (298+/-8+/-30) MeV, which is consistent with phenomenological expectations.