Screening in hot SU(2) gauge theory and propagators in 3d adjoint Higgs model

We investigate the large distance behavior of the electric and magnetic pro pagators of hot SU(2) gauge theory in different gauges using lattice simula tions of the full 4d theory and the effective, dimensionally reduced 3d the ory. A comparison of the 3d and 4d data for the propagators suggests that d imensional reduction works surprisingly well down to temperatures T similar to 2T(c). A detailed study of the volume dependence of magnetic propagator s is performed. The electric propagators show exponential decay at large di stances in all gauges considered and a possible gauge dependence of the ele ctric screening mass turns out to be statistically insignificant.