Dressed skeleton expansion and the coupling scale ambiguity problem

Perturbative expansions in quantum field theories are usually expressed in powers of a coupling constant. In principle, the infinite sum of the expansion series is independent of the renormalization scale of the coupling constant. In practice, there is a remnant dependence of the truncated series on the renormalization scale. This scale ambiguity can severely restrict the predictive power of theoretical calculations. The dressed skeleton expansion is developed as a calculational method which avoids the coupling scale ambiguity problem. In this method, physical quantities are expressed as functional expansions in terms of a coupling vertex function. The arguments of the vertex function are given by the physical momenta of each process. These physical momenta effectively replace the unspecified renormalization scale and eliminate the ambiguity problem. This method is applied to various field theoretical models and its main features and limitations are explored. For quantum chromodynamics, an expression for the running coupling constant of the three-gluon vertex is obtained. The effective coupling scale of this vertex is shown to be essentially given by μ2 ∼ Qmin2Qmed2/Qmax2, where Qmin2,Qmed2 and Qmax2 were respectively the smallest, the next-to-smallest and the largest scale among the three gluon virtualities. This functional form suggests that the three-gluon vertex becomes non-perturbative at asymmetric momentum configurations. Implications for four-jet physics is discussed