Renormalization of composite operators in Yang-Mills theories using a general covariant gauge

Essential to QCD applications of the operator product expansion, etc., is a knowledge of those operators that mix with gauge-invariant operators. A standard theorem asserts that the renormalization matrix is triangular: Gauge-invariant operators have alien gauge-variant operators among their counterterms, but, with a suitably chosen basis, the necessary alien operators have only themselves as counterterms. Moreover, the alien operators are supposed to vanish in physical matrix elements. A recent calculation by Hamberg and van Neerven apparently contradicts these results. By explicit calculations with the energy-momentum tensor, we show that the problems arise because of subtle infrared singularities that appear when gluonic matrix elements are taken on shell at zero momentum transfer.