YANG-MILLS THEORY IN A MODIFIED AXIAL GAUGE

The Yang-Mills functional integral is studied in an axial variant of ' t Hooft's maximal Abelian gauge. In this gauge Gauss' law can be compl etely resolved resulting in a description in terms of unconstrained va riables. Compared to previous work along this line starting with the w ork of Goldstone and Jackiw one ends up here with half as many integra tion variables, in addition to a field living in the Cartan subgroup o f the gauge group and in D - 1 dimensions. The latter is of particular relevance for the infrared behavior of the theory. Keeping only this variable we calculate the Wilson loop and find an area law.