A note on quark and gluon energy-momentum tensors

Abstract

Abstract We discuss the constraints on quark and gluon energy-momentum tensors in QCD that follow from the requirement of Renormalisation-Group invariance of the traces of these operators. Our study covers the most general form of the latter traces, while the energy-momentum tensors themselves are only subjected to very mild constraints. We derive Renormalisation-Group equations for the two finite independent functions of the strong coupling constant and renormalisation scale of minimal subtraction which completely define the energy-momentum tensors. We demonstrate that previously proposed definitions of the renormalized quark and gluon energy-momentum tensors are special cases of our results assuming no explicit dependence on the renormalisation scale. Finally, we present $$ \overline{\textrm{MS}} $$ MS ¯ -renormalised quark and gluon energy-momentum tensors at four-loop order.