Screening Masses of Hot SU(2) Gauge Theory from the 3D Adjoint Higgs Model

Abstract

We study the Landau gauge propagators of the lattice SU(2) 3d adjoint Higgs model, considered as an effective theory of high temperature 4d SU(2) gauge theory. From the long distance behaviour of the propagators we extract the screening masses. It is shown that the pole masses extracted from the propagators agree well with the screening masses obtained recently in finite temperature SU(2) theory. The relation of the propagator masses to the masses extracted from gauge invariant correlators is also discussed. In so-called lambda gauges non-perturbative evidence is given for the gauge independence of pole masses within this class of gauges.