General exact solutions for the full gluon propagator in QCD with the mass gap

Abstract

We have explicitly shown that Quantum Chromodynamics is a color gauge invariant theory with non-zero mass gap, which has been defined as the value of the regularized full gluon self-energy at a finite scale point. The mass gap itself is mainly generated by the nonlinear interaction of massless gluon modes. All this allows one to establish the structure of the full gluon propagator in the explicit presence of the mass gap. In this case, the two independent general types of formal solutions for the full gluon propagator as a function of the regularized mass gap have been found: (i) The nonlinear iteration solution at which the gluons remain massless is explicitly present. (ii) Existence of the solution with an effective gluon mass is also demonstrated.