Vacuum copies and perturbation theory in the 't hooft-veltman gauge of QED

The 't Hooft-Veltman gauge condition ?_μA_μ + A_μ² = 0 gives a version of quantum electrodynamics with many similarities to Yang-Mills theory, including the presence of Gribov gauge-fixing ambiguities. We exhibit and discuss some properties of a family of copies of the vacuum, emphasizing their bearing on perturbation theory and the choice of a vacuum state. It is shown that in a general gauge theory, the same perturbation series results from expanding about any gauge-copy of the vacuum.