Gauge (in)dependence and background field formalism

Abstract

It is shown that the gauge invariance and gauge dependence properties of effective action for Yang-Mills theories should be considered as two independent issues in the background field formalism. Application of this formalism to formulate the functional renormalization group approach is discussed. It is proven that there is a possibility to construct the corresponding average effective action invariant under the gauge transformations of background vector field. Nevertheless, being gauge invariant this action remains gauge dependent on-shell. Keywords: Background field method, Yang-Mills theories, Gauge invariance, Functional renormalization group approach, Gauge dependence