Model independent determination of the gluon condensate in four dimensional SU(3) gauge theory

We determine the nonperturbative gluon condensate of four-dimensional SU(3) gauge theory in a model-independent way. This is achieved by carefully subtracting high-order perturbation theory results from nonperturbative lattice QCD determinations of the average plaquette. No indications of dimension-two condensates are found. The value of the gluon condensate turns out to be of a similar size as the intrinsic ambiguity inherent to its definition. We also determine the binding energy of a B meson in the heavy quark mass limit. © 2014 American Physical Society.