We employ a functional approach to investigate the confinement problem in quenched Landau gauge QCD. We demonstrate analytically that a linear rising potential between massive quarks is generated by infrared singularities in the dressed quark–gluon vertex. The self-consistent mechanism that generates these singularities is driven by the scalar Dirac amplitudes of the full vertex and the quark propagator. These can only be present when chiral symmetry is broken. We have thus uncovered a novel mechanism that directly links chiral symmetry breaking with confinement.
The quark-gluon vertex in Landau gauge bound-state studies
