Non-perturbative colour octet states, the gluon 'mass' and heavy quark physics

by Owe PHILIPSEN (MIT)

Thursday 6 Jun 2002, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Auditorium (CERN)

Any undertstanding of confinement as well as the behaviour of a hot or dense quark gluon plasma state requires non-perturbative knowledge of the dynamics of colour degrees of freedom, or partons. On the other hand, partons and their properties are so far only defined in perturbation theory, which is limited to weak coupling. I show how gauge invariant properties of colour charge carriers can be defined in lattice gauge theory, such that they are amenable to numerical simulations. Specifically, I compute the corresponding gluon pole mass at zero and non-zero temperature, and discuss its connection to the spectrum of heavy quarkonia. Furthermore, a non-perturbative definition of the colour octet potential is presented.