Schwinger mechanism for gluons from lattice QCD

Continuum and lattice analyses have revealed the existence of a mass-scale in the gluon two-point Schwinger function. It has long been conjectured that this expresses the action of a Schwinger mechanism for gauge boson mass generation in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). For such to be true, it is necessary and sufficient that a dynamically-generated, massless, colour-carrying, scalar gluon+gluon correlation emerges as a feature of the dressed three-gluon vertex. Working with results on elementary Schwinger functions obtained via the numerical simulation of lattice-regularised QCD, we establish with an extremely high level of confidence that just such a feature appears; hence, confirm the conjectured origin of the gluon mass scale. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons .org /licenses /by /4 .0/). Funded by SCOAP3.

Automated summary

Continuum and lattice analyses have discovered a mass-scale in the gluon two-point Schwinger function, indicating the presence of a Schwinger mechanism for gauge boson mass generation in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). By using numerical simulations of lattice-regularised QCD, the researchers established with high confidence the existence of a dynamically-generated, massless, colour-carrying, scalar gluon+gluon correlation, confirming the conjectured origin of the gluon mass scale.