Off-shell renormalization of the massive QED in the unitary gauge

Abstract

Despite its simplicity, the unitary gauge is not a popular choice for practical loop calculations in gauge theories, due to the lack of off-shell renormalizability. We study the renormalization properties of the off-shell Green functions of the elementary electron fields in the massive QED, in order to elucidate the origin and structure of the extra ultraviolet divergences which exist only in the unitary gauge. We find that all these divergences affect the Green functions in a trivial way such that in coordinate space the off-shell Green functions are in fact multiplicatively renormalizable. This result may generalize to the abelian and non-abelian Higgs theories, for which the unitary gauge might bring much simplification to the loop calculations.