Effective charge from lattice QCD

Using lattice configurations for quantum chromodynamics(QCD)generated with three domain-wall fermions at a physical pion mass,we obtain a parameter-free prediction of QCD’s renormalisation-group-invariant process-independent effective charge,α^(k2).Owing to the dynamical breaking of scale invariance,evident in the emergence of a gluon mass-scale,m0=0.43(1)GeV,this coupling saturates at infrared momenta:α^(0)/π=0.97(4).Amongst other things:α^(k2)is almost identical to the process-dependent(PD)effective charge defined via the Bjorken sum rule;and also that PD charge which,employed in the one-loop evolution equations,delivers agreement between pion parton distribution functions computed at the hadronic scale and experiment.The diversity of unifying roles played byα^(k^2)suggests that it is a strong candidate for that object which represents the interaction strength in QCD at any given momentum scale;and its properties support a conclusion that QCD is a mathematically well-defined quantum field theory in four dimensions.