Massive analytic invariant charge in QCD

Abstract

The low-energy behavior of a recently proposed model for the massive analytic running coupling of QCD is studied. This running coupling has no unphysical singularities, and in the absence of masses displays infrared enhancement. The inclusion of the effects due to the mass of the lightest hadron is accomplished by employing the dispersion relation for the Adler $D$ function. The presence of the nonvanishing pion mass tames the aforementioned enhancement, giving rise to a finite value for the running coupling at the origin. In addition, the effective charge acquires a plateaulike behavior in the low-energy region of the timelike domain. This plateau is found to be in agreement with a number of phenomenological models for the strong running coupling. The developed invariant charge is applied in the processing of experimental data on the inclusive $\ensuremath{\tau}$ lepton decay. The effects due to the pion mass play an essential role here as well, affecting the value of the QCD scale parameter $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ extracted from these data. Finally, the massive analytic running coupling is compared with the effective coupling arising from the study of Schwinger-Dyson equations, whose infrared finiteness is due to a dynamically generated gluon mass. A qualitative picture of the possible impact of the former coupling on the chiral symmetry breaking is presented.