Counting Gribov copies

Understand

We show that an explicit counting of Gribov copies can shed light on the infrared behavior of non-abelian gauge theories.

• A power-law growth of the number of copies suppresses gluon propagation while the distribution of copies along a gauge orbit implies an enhanced density of small eigenvalues of the Fadeev-Popov operator.
• Both of these phenomena are related to confinement.
• The discreteness in the number of copies and the associated nonlocality also has implications for vacuum energy.