On ghost condensation, mass generation and Abelian dominance in the Maximal Abelian Gauge

Abstract

Recent work claimed that the off-diagonal gluons (and ghosts) in pure Yang-Mills theories, with Maximal Abelian gauge fixing (MAG), attain a dynamical mass through an off-diagonal ghost condensate. This condensation takes place due to a quartic ghost interaction, unavoidably present in MAG for renormalizability purposes. The off-diagonal mass can be seen as evidence for Abelian dominance. We discuss why ghost condensation of the type discussed in those works cannot be the reason for the off-diagonal mass and Abelian dominance, since it results in a tachyonic mass. We also point out what the full mechanism behind the generation of a real mass might look like.