Perturbative study of Yang-Mills theory in the infrared

Abstract: Pure Yang-Mills SU(N) theory is studied in four dimensional space and Landau gauge by a double perturbative expansion based on a massive free-particle propagator. By dimensional regularization, all diverging mass terms cancel exactly in the double expansion, without the need to include mass counterterms that would spoil the symmetry of the original Lagrangian. The emerging perturbation theory is safe in the infrared and shares the same behaviour of the standard perturbation theory in the UV. At one-loop, gluon and ghost propagators are found in excellent agreement with the data of lattice simulations and an infrared-safe running coupling is derived. A natural scale m=0.6-0.7 GeV is extracted from the data for N=3.