Natural constraints on the gluon-quark vertex

In principle, the strong-interaction sector of the Standard Model is characterised by a unique renormalisation-group-invariant (RGI) running interaction and a unique form for the dressed--gluon-quark vertex, $\Gamma_\mu$; but, whilst much has been learnt about the former, the latter is still obscure. In order to improve this situation, we use a RGI running-interaction that reconciles both top-down and bottom-up analyses of the gauge sector in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) to compute dressed-quark gap equation solutions with 1,660,000 distinct Ansaetze for $\Gamma_\mu$. Each one of the solutions is then tested for compatibility with three physical criteria and, remarkably, we find that merely…