Describing gluons at zero and finite temperature

Abstract

Any description of gluons requires a well-defined gauge. This is complicated non-perturbatively by Gribov copies. A possible method-independent gauge definition to resolve this problem is presented and afterwards used to study the properties of gluons at any temperature. It is found that only chromo-electric properties reflect the phase transition. From these the gauge-invariant phase transition temperature is determined for SU(2) and SU(3) Yang-Mills theory independently.

3 pages, 1 figure. Talk given at "The 5-th International Conference on Quarks and Nuclear Physics", Beijing, China, and at "Quarks, Hadrons, and the Phase Diagram of QCD", St. Goar, Germany, both September 2009. Submitted to the QNP proceedings