We examine the nonperturbative gauge dependence of arbitrary configuration space fermion correlators in quantum electrodynamics (QED). First, we study the dressed electron propagator (allowing for emission or absorption of any number of photons along a fermion line) using the first quantized approach to quantum field theory and analyze its gauge transformation properties induced by virtual photon exchange. This is then extended to the $N$-point functions where we derive an exact, generalized version of the fully nonperturbative Landau-Khalatnikov-Fradkin (LKF) transformation for these correlators. We discuss some general aspects of application in perturbation theory and investigate the structure of the LKF factor about $D=2$ dimensions.

• Received 13 January 2021
• Accepted 3 May 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.025014

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Published by the American Physical Society