  Employing functional approaches the infrared behaviour of Landau gauge QCD
vertex functions is investigated. Results for the ghost-gluon, three-gluon and
quark-gluon vertex functions are presented. As can be analytically shown a
linear rising potential between heavy quarks is generated by infrared
singularities in the dressed quark-gluon vertex. The selfconsistent mechanism
that generates these singularities implies the existence of scalar Dirac
amplitudes of the full vertex and the quark propagator. These amplitudes can
only be present when chiral symmetry is broken, either explicitly or
dynamically. The corresponding relations thus constitute a novel mechanism that
directly links chiral symmetry breaking with confinement.
