The deconfinement phase transition in the Hamiltonian approach to Yang--Mills theory in Coulomb gauge

Understand

The deconfinement phase transition of SU(2) Yang--Mills theory is investigated in the Hamiltonian approach in Coulomb gauge assuming a quasi-particle picture for the grand canonical gluon ensemble.

• The thermal equilibrium state is found by minimizing the free energy with respect to the quasi-gluon energy.
• Above the deconfinement phase transition the ghost form factor remains infrared divergent but its infrared exponent is approximately halved, while the gluon energy, being infrared divergent in the confined phase, becomes infrared finite in the deconfined phase.
• For the effective gluon mass we find a critical exponent of 0.37.