| Summary: | Abstract We extend quantum field theory by including purely virtual “cloud” sectors, to define physical off-shell correlation functions of gauge invariant quark and gluon fields, without affecting the S matrix amplitudes. The extension is made of certain cloud bosons, plus their anticommuting partners. Both are quantized as purely virtual, to ensure that they do not propagate ghosts. The extended theory is renormalizable and unitary. In particular, the off-shell, diagrammatic version of the optical theorem holds. We calculate the one-loop two-point functions of dressed quarks and gluons, and show that their absorptive parts are gauge independent, cloud independent and positive (while they are generically unphysical if the cloud sectors are not purely virtual). A gauge/cloud duality simplifies the computations and shows that the gauge choice is just a particular cloud. It is possible to dress every field insertion with a different cloud. We compare the purely virtual extension to previous approaches to similar problems.
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