The lattice gluon propagator into the next millennium

Abstract

We evaluate numerically the momentum-space gluon propagator in the lattice Landau gauge, for three- and four-dimensional pure SU(2) lattice gauge theory. Although there are large finite-size effects, we always observe, in the limit of large lattice volumes, a gluon propagator decreasing in the infrared limit. This result can be interpreted in a straightforward way, by considering the proximity of the so-called first Gribov horizon in the infrared directions. We also consider the problem of discretization errors introduced by the lattice regularization, and their effect on the ultraviolet behavior of the gluon propagator.