We study the formation of a mass gap, or effective gluon mass (and consequent dimensionful parameters such as the string tension, glueball mass, $〈\mathrm{Tr}{G_{\mu \nu }}^2〉$, correlation lengths) in continuum QCD, using a special set of Schwinger-Dyson equations. These equations are derived from a resummation of the Feynman graphs which represent certain gauge-invariant color-singlet Green's functions, and are themselves essentially gauge invariant. This resummation is essential to the multiplicative renormalizability of QCD in the light-cone gauge, which we adopt for technical reasons. We close the dynamical equations by "solving" a Ward identity, a procedure which, while exact in the infrared regime, is subject to ambiguities and corrections in the ultraviolet regime which are beyond the scope of the present work. (These ambiguities are less prominent for QCD in three dimensions, which we discuss also.) As discussed in an earlier work, quark confinement arises from a vortex condensate supported by the mass gap. Numerical calculations of the mass gap are presented, suggesting an effective gluon mass of 500±200 MeV and a $0^{+}$ glueball mass of about twice this value.

• Received 30 April 1982

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.26.1453