Soft asymptotics with mass gap

Abstract

From the operator product expansion the gluon condensate controls a certain power law correction to the ultraviolet behavior of the gauge theory. This is reflected by the asymptotic behavior of the effective gluon mass function as determined by its Schwinger-Dyson equation. We show that the current state of the art determination of the gluon mass function by Binosi, Ibanez and Papavassiliou points to a vanishing gluon condensate. If this is correct then the vacuum energy also vanishes in massless QCD. This result can be interpreted as a statement about a softness in the ultraviolet behavior and the consistency of this behavior with a mass gap.

Comments: 10 pages, 4 figures, improved discussion, version to appear in Physics Letters B