Gauge-independent thermal β function in Yang-Mills theory via the pinch technique Original Research Article

It is proposed to use the pinch technique to obtain the gauge-independent thermal β function βT in a hot Yang-Mills gas. Calculations of βT are shown detail at one-loop level in two different gauges, (i) the background field method with an arbitrary gauge parameter and (ii) the Coulomb gauge. When the pinch contributions to the gluon self-energy are included, the same result is derived for βT in both cases.