Magnetic screening in hot non-Abelian gauge theory

We analyze the large distance and low-momentum behavior of the magnetic gluon propagator of the SU(2) gauge theory at finite temperature. Lattice calculations within the 4-dimensional as well as the effective, dimensionally reduced 3-dimensional gauge theories in generalized Landau gauges and MAG show that the magnetic propagator is strongly infrared suppressed in Landau gauges but stays large and finite in MAG. Despite these differences in the low-momentum behavior of the propagator ii: calculated in different gauges the magnetic fields are exponentially screened in all gauges considered. From the propagator calculated in maximally Abelian gauge we find for the screening mass, m(M) = (1.48 +/- 0.17)T at T = 2T(c). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.