The Renormalization of Composite Operators in Yang-Mills Theories Using General Covariant Gauge

Abstract

Essential to QCD applications of the operator product expansion, etc., is a knowledge of those operators that mix with gauge-invariant operators. A standard theorem asserts that the renormalization matrix is triangular: Gauge-invariant operators have `alien' gauge-variant operators among their counterterms, but, with a suitably chosen basis, the necessary alien operators have only themselves as counterterms. Moreover, the alien operators are supposed to vanish in physical matrix elements. A recent calculation by Hamberg and van Neerven apparently contradicts these results. By explicit calculations with the energy-momentum tensor, we show that the problems arise because of subtle infra-red singularities that appear when gluonic matrix elements are taken on-shell at zero momentum transfer. Keywords: twist-two covariant gluon operator, finite part, mixing, non-abelian, anomalous dimension, Ward identity, BRST, modified LSZ reduction, Dixon, Taylor, Joglekar, Lee.