Padé Approximants and the analytic structure of the gluon and ghost propagators

Abstract

In a Quantum Field Theory, the analytic structure of the 2-points correlation functions, ie the propagators, encloses information about the properties of the corresponding quanta, particularly if they are or not confined. However, in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), we can only have an analytic solution in a perturbative picture of the theory. For the non-perturbative propagators, one resorts on numerical solutions of QCD that accesses specific regions of the Euclidean momentum space, as, for example, those computed via Monte Carlo simulations on the lattice. In the present work, we rely on Padé Approximants (PA) to approximate the numerical data for the gluon and ghost propagators, and investigate their analytic structures. In a first stage, the advantages of using PAs are explored when reproducing the properties of a function, focusing on its analytic structure. The use of PA sequences is tested for the perturbative solutions of the propagators, and a residue analysis is performed to help in the identification of the analytic structure. A technique used to approximate a PA to a discrete set of points is proposed and tested for some test data sets. Finally, the methodology is applied to the Landau gauge gluon and ghost propagators, obtained via lattice simulations. The results identify a conjugate pair of complex poles for the gluon propagator, that is associated with the infrared structure of the theory. This is in line with the presence of singularities for complex momenta in theories where confinement is observed. Regarding the ghost propagator, a pole at $p^2=0$ is identified. For both propagators, a branch cut is found on the real negative $p^2$-axis, which recovers the perturbative analysis at high momenta.