Studying pion effects in the quark propagator

Abstract

Within the framework of Schwinger-Dyson and Bethe-Salpeter equations we investigate the importance of pions for the quark-gluon interaction. To this end we choose a truncation for the quark-gluon vertex that includes intermediate pion degrees of freedom and adjust the interaction such that unquenched lattice results for various current quark masses are reproduced. The corresponding Bethe-Salpeter kernel is constructed from constraints by chiral symmetry. After extrapolation to the physical point we find a considerable contribution of the pion back reaction to the quark mass function as well as to the chiral condensate. The quark wave function is less affected.