The Standard Model in the Alpha gauge is not renormalizable

Abstract

We study the Ward-Takahashi identities in the standard model with the gauge fixing terms given by (1.1) and (1.2). We find that the isolated singularities of the propagators for the unphysical particles are poles of even order, not the simple poles people have assumed them to be. Furthermore, the position of these poles are ultraviolet divergent. Thus the standard model in the alpha gauge in general, and the Feynman gauge in particular, is not renormalizable. We study also the case with the gauge fixing terms (1.3), and find that the propagators remain non-renormalizable. The only gauge without these difficulties is the Landau gauge. One therefore has to make a distinction between the renormalizability of the Green functions and that of the physical scattering amplitudes.