Nonperturbative Higgs-Schwinger mechanism at the origin of the gluon mass and color confinement

Abstract

Evidence from lattice and continuum studies supports the existence of a fully nonperturbative Higgs mechanism generating mass for gluons in linear covariant gauges. The broken charge is the Kugo-Ojima charge. The corresponding unphysical Goldstone boson is a bound-state superposition of two gluons, three gluons, a ghost-antighost, and a quark-antiquark pair. Mass generation occurs via the Schwinger mechanism, triggered by the formation of the Goldstone boson. Once corrected for symmetry breaking, the color charge operator is unbroken and confining.

Comments: v2: more emphasis and a new ref. on the quark-antiquark component of the Goldstone boson in full QCD, minor changes