The Wilson Loop in Yang-Mills Theory in the General Axial Gauge

We test the unified-gauge formalism by computing a Wilson loop in Yang-Mills theory to one-loop order. The unified-gauge formalism is characterized by the abritrary, but fixed, four-vector Nμ, which collectively represents the light-cone gauge (N2 = 0), the temporal gauge (N2 > 0), the pure axial gauge (N2 < 0) and the planar gauge (N2 < 0). A novel feature of the calculation is the use of distinct sets of vectors, {nμ, n ∗ μ} and {Nμ, N ∗ μ}, for the path and for the gauge-fixing constraint, respectively. The answer for the Wilson loop is independent of Nμ, and agrees numerically with the result obtained in the Feymman gauge. [email protected] [email protected] Permanent address: Dept. of Math & Stats., U. of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1