Nonperturbative Higgs-Schwinger mechanism at the origin of the gluon mass and color confinement

Evidence from lattice and continuum studies supports the existence of a fully nonperturbative Higgs mechanism generating mass for gluons in linear covariant gauges. The broken charge is the Kugo-Ojima charge. The corresponding unphysical Goldstone boson is a bound-state superposition of two gluons, three gluons, a ghost-antighost, and a quark-antiquark pair. Mass generation occurs via the Schwinger mechanism, triggered by the formation of the Goldstone boson. Once corrected for symmetry breaking, the color charge operator is unbroken and confining.