We investigate the 2-point correlation functions of Yang-Mills theory in the Landau gauge by means of a massive extension of the Faddeev-Popov action. This model is based on some phenomenological arguments and constraints on the ultraviolet behavior of the theory. We show that the running coupling constant remains finite at all energy scales (no Landau pole) for d > 2 and argue that the relevant parameter of perturbation theory is significantly smaller than 1 at all energies. Perturbative results at low orders are therefore expected to be satisfactory and we indeed find a very good agreement between oneloop correlation functions and the lattice simulations, in three and four dimensions. Dimension-2 is shown to play the role of an upper critical dimension, which explains why the lattice predictions are qualitatively different from those in higher dimensions.

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This article is devoted to the study of the critical properties of classical XY and Heisenberg frustrated magnets in three dimensions. We first analyze the experimental and numerical situations. We show that the unusual behaviors encountered in these systems, typically nonuniversal scaling, are hardly compatible with the hypothesis of a second order phase transition. Moreover, the fact that the scaling laws are significantly violated and that the anomalous dimension is negative in many cases provides strong indications that the transitions in frustrated magnets are most probably of very weak first order. We then review the various perturbative and early nonperturbative approaches used to investigate these systems. We argue that none of them provides a completely satisfactory description of the three-dimensional critical behavior. We then recall the principles of the nonperturbative approach -the effective average action method -that we have used to investigate the physics of frustrated magnets. First, we recall the treatment of the unfrustrated -O(N ) -case with this method. This allows to introduce its technical aspects. Then, we show how this method unables to clarify most of the problems encountered in the previous theoretical descriptions of frustrated magnets. Firstly, we get an explanation of the long-standing mismatch between different perturbative approaches which consists in a nonperturbative mechanism of annihilation of fixed points between two and three dimensions. Secondly, we get a coherent picture of the physics of frustrated magnets in qualitative and (semi-) quantitative agreement with the numerical and experimental results. The central feature that emerges from our approach is the existence of scaling behaviors without fixed or pseudo-fixed point and that relies on a slowing-down of the renormalization group flow in a whole region in the coupling constants space. This phenomenon allows to explain the occurence of generic weak first order behaviors and to understand the absence of universality in the critical behavior of frustrated magnets.

We show that the correlation functions of ghosts and gluons for the pure Yang-Mills theory in Landau gauge can be accurately reproduced for all momenta by a one-loop calculation. The key point is to use a massive extension of the Faddeev-Popov action. The agreement with lattice simulation is excellent in d=4. The one-loop calculation also reproduces all the characteristic features of the lattice simulations in d=3 and naturally explains the pecularities of the propagators in d=2.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

We provide a resolution of one of the long-standing puzzles in the theory of disordered systems. By reformulating the functional renormalization group for the critical behavior of the random field Ising model in a superfield formalism, we are able to follow the associated supersymmetry and its spontaneous breaking along the functional renormalization group flow. Breaking is shown to occur below a critical dimension d(DR) ≃ 5.1 and leads to a breakdown of the "dimensional reduction" property. We compute the critical exponents as a function of dimension and give evidence that scaling is described by three independent exponents.

We develop a nonperturbative functional renormalization group approach for the random-field O(N) model that allows us to investigate the ordering transition in any dimension and for any value of N including the Ising case. We show that the failure of dimensional reduction and standard perturbation theory is due to the nonanalytic nature of the zero-temperature fixed point controlling the critical behavior, nonanalyticity, which is associated with the existence of many metastable states. We find that this nonanalyticity leads to critical exponents differing from the dimensional reduction prediction only below a critical dimension dc(N)<6, with dc(N=1)>3.

We investigate the three-point correlation functions of Yang-Mills theory in the Landau gauge, with a particular emphasis on the infrared regime. The effect of the Gribov copies is accounted for by adding a mass term for the gluons in the Faddeev-Popov action in the Landau gauge. We perform a one-loop calculation for the ghost-antighost-gluon and three-gluon correlation functions. These analytic results are compared with the available lattice data and give a very satisfying agreement.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures. Minor changes. Some comments, references and ancillary file adde

We report on the work presented in Ref. [1], where a new one-parameter family of Landau gauges has been proposed for Yang-Mills theories, inspired by an analogy with disordered systems in condensed matter physics. This is based on a particular average over Gribov copies which avoids the Neuberger zero problem of the standard Fadeev-Popov construction. The proposed gauge fixing can be formulated as a local renormalizable field theory in four dimensions and is wellsuited for analytical calculations. A remarkable feature is that, for what concerns the calculation of ghost and gauge field correlators, the gauged-fixed action is perturbatively equivalent to a simple massive extension of the Faddeev-Popov action. The renormalization group flow of the theory admits infrared safe trajectories, with no Landau pole. The one-loop calculations of Yang-Mills two-point correlators show remarkable agreement with lattice simulations all the way to the deep infrared.Xth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum,