The gluon propagator close to criticality

Understand

The deconfinement phase transition of pure Yang-Mills theory at finite temperature is reflected in the behavior of gauge-fixed gluonic correlation functions.

• This is one of many examples of how physical information can be extracted from gauge-dependent correlations which is not always obvious.
• Here, we study the behavior of the Landau-gauge gluon propagator of pure SU(2) across the phase transition in 2+1 and 3+1 dimensions in order to assess to what extend the corresponding critical behavior is reflected in these correlations.
• We discuss why it should emerge from a continuum perspective and test our expectations in lattice simulations.