Gauge Invariance of Green Functions: Background-Field Method versus Pinch Technique

Application of the background-field method to QCD and the electroweak Standard Model yields gauge-invariant effective actions giving rise to simple Ward identities. Within this method, we calculate the quantities that have been treated in the literature using the pinch technique. Putting the quantum gauge parameter equal to one, we recover the pinch-technique results as a special case of the background-field method. The one-particle-irreducible Green functions of the background-field method fulfil for arbitrary gauge parameters the desirable theoretical properties that have been noticed within the pinch technique. Therefore the background-field formalism provides a general framework for the direct calculation of well-behaved Green functions. Within this formalism, the pinch technique appears as one of arbitrarily many equivalent possibilities.