Color Confinement and Massive Gluons

Abstract

Color confinement is one of the central issues in QCD so that there are various interpretations of this feature. In this paper we have adopted the interpretation that colored particles are not subject to observation just because colored states are unphysical in the sense of Eq. (2.16). It is shown that there are two phases in QCD distinguished by different choices of the gauge parameter. In one phase, called the "confinement phase", color confinement is realized and gluons turn out to be massive. In the other phase, called the "deconfinement phase", color confinement is not realized, but the gluons remain massless.