Alaksiej Kachanovich (IFT) - ON THURSDAY!

Gluon background field approximation to Yang-Mills thermodynamics

We give an introduction to the Sasaki-Redlich model for Yang-Mills thermodynamics in the background field approximation. We show that in the second order with respect to gluon field fluctuations the partition function depends only on the traced Polyakov loop Phi. We solve the gap equation for Phi as a function of the temperature and compare the result with lattice QCD simulations. We discuss next steps beyond the Gaussian approximation which lead, e.g., to a temperature dependent gluon mass.