We present a review of our numerical studies of the running coupling constant, gluon and ghost propagators, ghost-gluon vertex and ghost condensate for the case of pure SU(2) lattice gauge theory in the minimal Landau gauge. Emphasis is given to the infrared regime, in order to investigate the confinement mechanisms of QCD. We compare our results to other theoretical and phenomenological studies.

Non-perturbative properties of QCD, such as color confinement, are encoded in the infrared behavior of correlation functions, e.g. propagators and vertices. Various analytic predictions have been suggested for these quantities in various gauges. Here we numerically test these predictions using lattice gauge theory. In particular, we present results for the 2- and 3-point functions for SU(2) Landau-gauge Yang-Mills theory in three and in four dimensions. Special attention is paid to systematic finite-volume effects. The gluon and ghost propagators are also evaluated in the so-called interpolating gauge (between the Landau and the Coulomb gauge), in order to study their gauge-dependence. Finally, we consider these propagators in Landau gauge at finite temperature, with the aim of understanding the effect of the deconfinement phase transition on their infrared behavior. All our results are compatible with the so-called Gribov-Zwanziger confinement scenario.

Three-dimensional N-vector spin models may define universality classes for such diverse phenomena as i) the superfluid transition in liquid helium (currently investigated in the micro-gravity environment of the Space Shuttle) and ii) the transition from hadronic matter to a quark-gluon plasma, studied in heavy-ion collisions at the laboratories of Brookhaven and CERN. The models have been extensively studied both by field-theoretical and by statistical mechanical methods, including Monte Carlo simulations using cluster algorithms. These algorithms are applicable also in the presence of a magnetic field. Key quantities for the description of the transitions above - such as universal critical amplitude ratios and the location of the so-called pseudo-critical line - can be obtained from the models' magnetic equation of state, which relates magnetization, external magnetic field and temperature. Here we present an improved parametrization for the equation of state of the models, allowing a better fit to the numerical data. Our proposed form is inspired by perturbation theory, with coefficients determined nonperturbatively from fits to the data.