Radial propagators and Wilson loops

Abstract

We present a relation which connects the propagator in the radial (Fock-Schwinger) gauge with a gauge invariant Wilson loop. It is closely related to the well-known field strength formula and can be used to calculate the radial gauge propagator. The result is shown to diverge in four-dimensional space even for free fields, its singular nature is however naturally explained using the renormalization properties of Wilson loops with cusps and self-intersections. Using this observation we provide a consistent regularization scheme to facilitate loop calculations. Finally we compare our results with previous approaches to derive a propagator in Fock-Schwinger gauge.

Comments: 26 pages, LaTeX2e, 4 postscript figures included. Uses epsf, latexsym, amssymb and fancyheadings