The Gribov horizon and spontaneous BRST symmetry breaking

Abstract: An equivalent formulation of the Gribov-Zwanziger theory accounting for the gauge fixing ambiguity in the Landau gauge is presented. The resulting action is constrained by a Slavnov-Taylor identity stemming from a nilpotent exact BRST invariance which is spontaneously broken due to the presence of the Gribov horizon. This spontaneous symmetry breaking can be described in a purely algebraic way through the introduction of a pair of auxiliary fields which give rise to a set of linearly broken Ward identities. The Goldstone sector turns out to be decoupled. The underlying exact nilpotent BRST invariance allows to employ BRST cohomology tools within the Gribov horizon to identify renormalizable extensions of gauge invariant operators. Using a simple toy model and appropriate Dirac bracket quantization, we discuss the time-evolution invariance of the operator cohomology. We further comment on the unitarity issue in a confining theory, and stress that BRST cohomology alone is not sufficient to ensure unitarity, a fact, although well known, frequently ignored.