Analytic continuation and perturbative expansions in QCD

Starting from the divergence pattern of perturbative quantum chromodynamics, we propose a novel, non-power series replacing the standard expansion in powers of the renormalized coupling constant $a$. The coefficients of the new expansion are calculable at each finite order from the Feynman diagrams, while the expansion functions, denoted as $W_n(a)$, are defined by analytic continuation in the Borel complex plane. The infrared ambiguity of perturbation theory is manifest in the prescription dependence of the $W_n(a)$. We prove that the functions $W_n(a)$ have branch point and essential singularities at the origin $a=0$ of the complex $a$-plane and their perturbative expansions in powers of $a$ are divergent, while the expansion of the correlators in terms of the $W_n(a)$ set is convergent under quite loose conditionsComment: 18 pages, latex, 5 figures in EPS forma

Comment on "Infrared freezing of Euclidean QCD observables"

Recently, P. M. Brooks and C.J. Maxwell [Phys. Rev. D{\bf 74} 065012 (2006)] claimed that the Landau pole of the one-loop coupling at $Q^2=\Lambda^2$ is absent from the leading one-chain term in a skeleton expansion of the Euclidean Adler ${\cal D}$ function. Moreover, in this approximation one has continuity along the Euclidean axis and a smooth infrared freezing, properties known to be satisfied by the "true" Adler function. We show that crucial in the derivation of these results is the use of a modified Borel summation, which leads simultaneously to the loss of another fundamental property of the true Adler function: the analyticity implied by the K\"allen-Lehmann representation