Partial screening of classical color

Abstract

The static classical gauge potentials generated by a shell source of SU(2) color are examined. This is done within an ansatz for the gauge potentials which incorporates not only the Abelian, or Coulomb, solution but also spans the space of static fluctuations which have been shown by Magg to lower the energy from its Coulomb value. We find that, for supercritical coupling $\alpha >{\alpha }_c=\frac{3}{2}$, configurations corresponding to the minimum of the ansatz energy functional only partially screen the external source. Qualifications of this result are discussed.