Short-distance tachyonic gluon mass and 1/Q2 corrections

We consider the assumption that a tachyonic gluon mass imitates short-distance non-perturbative physics of QCD. The phenomenological implications include modifications of the QCD sum rules for correlators of currents with various quantum numbers. The new 1/Q(2) terms allow us to resolve in a natural way old puzzles in the pion and scalar-gluonium channels. They lead to a slight reduction of the values of the running light quark masses from the (pseudo)scalar sum rules and of alpha(s)(M-tau) from tau decay data. Analogously such terms only affect slightly the determinations of the running strange quark mass from e(+)e(-) and tau decay data. Further tests can be provided by precision measurements of the correlators on the lattice and by the e(+)e(-) --> hadrons data. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.