Residual Confinement in High-Temperature Yang-Mills Theory

Abstract

The infrared behavior of Landau gauge gluon and ghost propagators are investigated in Yang-Mills theory at non-vanishing temperatures. Self-consistent solutions are presented for temperatures below the presumed phase transition and in the infinite temperature limit. Gluon confinement is manifest in the infrared behavior of these propagators. As expected confinement prevails below the phase transition. In the infinite-temperature limit a qualitative change is observed: the chromoelectric sector exhibits a near-perturbative behavior while long-range chromomagnetic interactions, mediated by soft ghost modes, are still present. The latter behavior is in agreement with corresponding lattice results. It furthermore implies that part of the gluons are still confined.