Complex poles, spectral function and reflection positivity violation of Yang-Mills theory

Abstract: We discuss the analytic continuation of the gluon propagator from the Euclidean region to the complex squared-momentum plane towards the Minkowski region from a viewpoint of gluon confinement. For this purpose, we investigate the massive Yang-Mills model with one-loop quantum corrections, which is to be identified with a low-energy effective theory of the Yang-Mills theory in the sense that the confining decoupling solution for the Euclidean gluon and ghost propagators of the Yang-Mills theory in the Landau gauge obtained by numerical simulations on the lattice are reproduced with good accuracy from the massive Yang-Mills model by taking into account one-loop quantum corrections. We show that the gluon propagator in the massive Yang-Mills model has a pair of complex conjugate poles or "tachyonic" poles of multiplicity two, in accordance with the fact that the gluon field has a negative spectral function, while the ghost propagator has at most one "unphysical" pole. These results are consistent with general relationships between the number of complex poles of a propagator and the sign of the spectral function originating from the branch cut in the Minkowski region under some assumptions on the asymptotic behaviors of the propagator. Consequently, we give an analytical proof for violation of the reflection positivity as a necessary condition for gluon confinement for any choice of the parameters in the massive Yang-Mills model, including the physical point. Moreover, the complex structure of the propagator enables us to explain why the gluon propagator in the Euclidean region is well described by the Gribov-Stingl form.