Dynamical gluon mass generation in pure Yang-Mills theories

Resumo

Nowadays Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is without any doubt the accepted quantum field theory used to describe the behavior of the strong interactions from the point of view of their fundamental constituents, quarks and gluons, in the entire range of energies. As is well known, the running of the strong coupling constant is such that, in the ultraviolet regime (high energies), the theory exhibits the property of asymptotic freedom, allowing for a perturbative treatment of the physics at this scale of energies. However, in the infrared regime (low energies), the strong interaction becomes truly strong, thus invalidating any attempt to employ perturbation theory. For this reason one is forced to appeal to nonperturbative methods.