Running mass, effective energy, and confinement: The lattice quark propagator in Coulomb gauge

Abstract

We calculate the lattice quark propagator in Coulomb gauge both from dynamical and quenched configurations. We show that in the continuum limit both the static and full quark propagator are multiplicatively renormalizable. From the propagator we extract the quark renormalization function Z(|p|) and the running mass M(|p|) and extrapolate the latter to the chiral limit. We find that M(|p|) practically coincides with the corresponding Landau gauge function for small momenta. The computation of M(|p|) can be however made more efficient in Coulomb gauge; this can lead to a better determination of the chiral mass and the quark anomalous dimension. Moreover from the structure of the full propagator we can read off an expression for the dispersion relation of quarks, compatible with an IR divergent effective energy. If confirmed on larger volumes this finding would allow to extend the Gribov-Zwanziger confinement mechanism to the fermionic sector of QCD.