We perform a study of the effects from maximal abelian gauge Gribov copies in the context of the dual superconductor scenario of confinement, on the basis of a novel approach for estimation of systematic uncertainties from incomplete gauge fixing. We present numerical results, in SU (2) lattice gauge theory, using the overrelaxed simulated annealing gauge fixing algorithm. We find abelian and non-abelian string tensions to differ significantly, their ratio being 0.92(4) at β = 2.5115. An approximate factorization of the abelian potential into monopole and photon contributions has been confirmed, the former giving rise to the abelian string tension.

QCD lattice simulations with 2+1 flavours (when two quark flavours are mass degenerate) typically start at rather large up-down and strange quark masses and extrapolate first the strange quark mass and then the up-down quark mass to its respective physical value. Here we discuss an alternative method of tuning the quark masses, in which the singlet quark mass is kept fixed. Using group theory the possible quark mass polynomials for a Taylor expansion about the flavour symmetric line are found, first for the general 1 + 1 + 1 flavour case and then for the 2 + 1 flavour case. This ensures that the kaon always has mass less than the physical kaon mass. This method of tuning quark masses then enables highly constrained polynomial fits to be used in the extrapolation of hadron masses to their physical values. Numerical results for the 2 + 1 flavour case confirm the usefulness of this expansion and an extrapolation to the physical pion mass gives hadron mass values to within a few percent of their experimental values. Singlet quantities remain constant which allows the lattice spacing to be determined from hadron masses (without necessarily being at the physical point). Furthermore an extension of this programme to include partially quenched results is given.

Propagators of the diagonal and the off-diagonal gluons are studied numerically in the Maximal Abelian gauge of SU(2) lattice gauge theory. It is found that in the infrared region the propagator of the diagonal gluon is strongly enhanced in comparison with the off-diagonal one. The enhancement factor is about 50 at our smallest momentum 325 MeV. We have also applied various fits to the propagator formfactors.