Ghost-antighost-gluon vertex from the Curci-Ferrari model: Two-loop corrections

The Curci-Ferrari model has been shown to provide a good grasp on pure Yang-Mills correlation functions in the Landau gauge, already at one-loop order. In a recent work, the robustness of these results has been tested by evaluating the two-loop corrections to the gluon and ghost propagators. We pursue this systematic investigation by computing the ghost-antighost-gluon vertex to the same accuracy in a particular kinematic configuration that makes the calculations simpler. Because both the parameters of the model and the normalizations of the fields have already been fixed in a previous work, the present calculation represents both a pure prediction and a stringent test of the approach. We find that the two-loop results systematically improve the comparison to Monte Carlo simulations as compared to earlier one-loop results. The improvement is particularly significative in the SU(3) case where the predicted ghost-antighost-gluon vertex is in very good agreement with the data. The same comparison in the SU(2) case is not as good, however. This may be due to the presence of a larger coupling constant in the infrared in that case although we note that a similar mismatch has been quoted in nonperturbative continuum approaches. Despite these features of the SU(2) case, it is possible to find sets of parameters fitting both the propagators and the ghost-antighost-gluon vertex to a reasonable accuracy.