Weak gauge-invariance of dimension two condensate in Yang-Mills theory

We give a formal proof that the spacetime average of the vacuum condensate of mass dimension two, i.e., the vacuum expectation value of the squared potential A(mu)(2), is gauge invariant in the weak sense that it is independent of the gauge-fixing condition adopted in quantizing the Yang-Mills theory. This is shown at least for the small deformation from the generalized Lorentz and the modified maximal Abelian gauge in the naive continuum formulation neglecting Gribov copies. This suggests that the numerical value of the condensate could be the same no matter what gauge-fixing conditions for choosing the representative from the gauge orbit are adopted to measure it. Finally, we discuss how this argument should be modified when the Gribov copies exist. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.