  The effective gluon propagator constructed with the pinch technique is
governed by a Schwinger-Dyson equation with special structure and gauge
properties, that can be deduced from the correspondence with the background
field method. Most importantly the non-perturbative gluon self-energy is
transverse order-by-order in the dressed loop expansion, and separately for
gluonic and ghost contributions, a property which allows for a meanigfull
truncation. A linearized version of the truncated Schwinger-Dyson equation is
derived, using a vertex that satisfies the required Ward identity and contains
massless poles. The resulting integral equation, subject to a properly
regularized constraint, is solved numerically, and the main features of the
solutions are briefly discussed.
