GAUGE THEORIES AT ZERO AND NONZERO TEMPERATURES

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Quantum Chromodynamics or QCD is the currently accepted and well-tested theory which sums up our knowledge, to date, of quarks, which are the fundamental constituents of nuclear matter, and of gluons, the particles responsible for nuclear forces. The collisions of heavy atomic nuclei at the relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC) in Brookhaven is expected to produce a new state of matter, the so-called quark-gluon plasma, which will provide an important new testing ground for QCD, with extreme conditions for various physical parameters such as pressure and temperature, and thus potentially leading to further elucidation,confirmation or extension of the theory. The expected weakening of interparticle forces under such conditions, the so-called screening effects, will be an important ingredient in the interpretation of data from RHIC.In this project, theoretical investigations of different types of screening effects in the quark-gluon plasma, as well as a number of related questions, will be carried out. The basic mathematical strategy, which is an extension of previously used techniques, will be to relate QCD to suitable theories in lower and higher number of spacetime dimensions, an approach which has provided significant new insights recently. Whereverappropriate, results obtained will be correlated with numerical computer-based analysis of such theories.