We show that an explicit counting of Gribov copies can shed light on the infrared behavior of non-Abelian gauge theories. A power-law growth of the number of copies suppresses gluon propagation while the distribution of copies along a gauge orbit implies an enhanced density of small eigenvalues of the Fadeev-Popov operator. Both of these phenomena are related to confinement. The discreteness in the number of copies and the associated nonlocality also has implications for vacuum energy.

• Received 13 January 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.79.085013