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

TL;DR

This study investigates the screening masses in hot SU(2) gauge theory using a 3D adjoint Higgs model, finding good agreement with finite temperature results and providing evidence for gauge independence of pole masses.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract screening masses from lattice propagators in the 3D adjoint Higgs model and compares them with gauge-invariant masses, demonstrating gauge independence.

Findings

Pole masses agree with screening masses from finite temperature SU(2)

Propagator masses relate to gauge-invariant correlator masses

Non-perturbative evidence supports gauge independence of pole masses

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.