The infrared behavior of QCD propagators in Landau gauge (Q5934040)

Some features of the solutions to the truncated Dyson-Schwinger equations(DSEs) for the propagators of QCD in Landau gauge are summarized. In particular, the Kugo-Ojima confinement criterion is realized, and positivity of transverse gluons is manifestly violated in these solutions. In Landau gauge, the gluon-ghost vertex function offers a convenient possibility to define a nonperturbative running coupling. The infrared fixed point obtained from this coupling which determines the 2-point interactions of color-octet quark currents implies the existence of unphysical massless states which are necessary to escape the cluster decomposition of colored clusters. The gluon and ghost propagators, and the nonperturbative running coupling, are compared to recent lattice simulations. A significant deviation of the running coupling from the infrared behavior extracted in simulations of 3-point functions is attributed to an inconsistency of asymmetric subtraction schemes due to a consequence of the Kugo-Ojima criterion: infrared enhanced ghosts.