Nonperturbative definition of the pole mass and short distance expansion of the heavy quark potential in QCD

We show that the O(Lambda) ambiguity in the pole mass can be fixed in a natural way by introducing a modified nonperturbative V-scheme momentum space coupling tilde-alphaV(q) where the confining contributions have been subtracted out. The method used is in the spirit of the infrared finite coupling approach to power corrections, and gives a non perturbative definition of the `potential subtracted' mass. The short distance expansion of the static potential is derived, taking into account an hypothetical short distance linear term. The magnitude of the standard OPE contributions are estimated in quenched QCD, based on results of Luscher and Weisz. It is observed that the expansion is not yet reliable at the shortest distances presently measured on the lattice.