The Gauge-Independent QCD Effective Charge

dc.creatorWatson, N. J.
dc.date1996-06-19
dc.date1997-04-01
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T11:35:16Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T11:35:16Z
dc.descriptionIt is shown how the QED concept of a gauge-, scale- and scheme-independent one-loop effective charge can be extended directly at the diagrammatic level to QCD, thus justifying explicitly the ``naive non-abelianization'' prescription used in renormalon calculus. It is first argued that, for on-shell external fields and at the strictly one-loop level, the required gluon self-energy-like function is precisely that obtained from S-matrix elements via the pinch technique. The generalization of the pinch technique to explicitly off-shell processes is then introduced. It is shown how, as a result of a fundamental cancellation among conventional perturbation theory diagrams, encoded in the QCD Ward identities, the pinch technique one-loop gluon self-energy i\hatΠ_{μν}^{ab}(q) remains gauge-independent and universal regardless of the fact that the ``external'' fields in the given process are off-shell. This demonstration involves a simple technique enabling the isolation, in an arbitrary gauge, of i\hatΠ_{μν}^{ab}(q) from subclasses of up to several hundred diagrams at once. Furthermore, it is shown how this one-loop cancellation mechanism iterates for the subclasses of n-loop diagrams containing implicitly the Dyson chains of n one-loop self-energies i\hatΠ_{μν}^{ab}(q). The gauge cancellation required for the Dyson summation of i\hatΠ_{μν}^{ab}(q) is thus demonstrated explicitly in a general class of ghost-free gauges for all orders n.
dc.description48 pages, Latex, uses axodraw.sty (included). Revised to include throughout the case of non-covariant gauges too
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9606381
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9606381
dc.identifierNucl.Phys.B494:388-432,1997
dc.identifierdoi:10.1016/S0550-3213(97)00179-X
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/198534
dc.subjectHigh Energy Physics - Phenomenology
dc.titleThe Gauge-Independent QCD Effective Charge
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