Power corrections and Landau singularity

Abstract

In the dispersive approach of Dokshitzer, Marchesini and Webber, standard power-behaved contributions of infrared origin are described with the notion of an infrared regular QCD coupling. I argue that their framework suggests the existence of non-standard contributions, arising from short distances (hence unrelated to renormalons and the operator product expansion), which appear in the process of removing the Landau singularity of the perturbative coupling. A natural definition of an infrared finite perturbative coupling is suggested within the dispersive method. Implications for the tau hadronic width and the lattice determination of the gluon condensate, where $O(1/Q^2)$ contributions can be generated, are pointed out.

46 pages, latex, no figures