Soft Dynamics and Gauge Theories

Abstract

Infra-red divergences obscure the underlying soft dynamics in gauge theories. They remove the pole structures associated with particle propagation in the various Green's functions of gauge theories. Here we present a solution to this problem. We give two equations which describe how charged particles must be dressed by gauge degrees of freedom. One follows from gauge invariance, the other, which is new, from velocity superselection rules familiar from the heavy quark effective theory. The solution to these equations in the abelian theory is proven to lead to on-shell Green's functions that are free of soft divergences at all orders in perturbation theory.

Comments: 10 pages, 8 figures; version to appear in Phys. Rev. D [RC], minor clarifications