Infrared Finiteness in Yang-Mills Theories

Abstract

The infrared divergences of renormalizable theories with coupled massless fields (in particular the Yang-Mills theory) are shown to cancel for transition probabilities corresponding to finite-energy-resolution detectors, just as in quantum electrodynamics. This result is established through lowest nontrivial order in perturbation theory for the detection of massive muons in a quantum electrodynamic theory containing massless electrons or the detection of massive quarks in a Yang-Mills theory.