Severely infrared singular gluon propagator in QCD

Abstract

We have explicitly shown that the infrared structure of the full gluon propagator in QCD is an infite sum over all severe (i.e., more singular than $1/q^2$) infrared singularities. It reflects the zero momentum modes enhancement effect in the true QCD vacuum. Its existence exhibits a characteristic mass (the so-called mass gap), which is responsible for the scale of nonperturbative dynamics in the QCD ground state. By an infrared renormalization of a mass gap only, the deep infrared structure of the full gluon propagator is saturated by the simplest severe infrared singularity, the famous $(q^2)^{-2}$. So, there is no smooth in the infrared limit the full gluon propagator. The main dynamical source of severe infrared singularities in the gluon propagator is the two-loop skeleton term of the corresponding equation of motion, which contains the four-gluon vertices only. Taking into account the distribution nature of severe infrared singularities, the gluon confinement criterion is formulated in a manifestly gauge-invariant way.