Consistent approach to study gluon quasi-particles

We discuss a novel approach to estimate the partition function in effective model frameworks when the effective potentials have multiple extrema, so that ascertaining a mean field becomes difficult. Using this approach we present a consistent model to study the thermodynamic properties of gluon quasi-particles as a function of temperature, both in the color confined and the color deconfined phases.
Comment: 8 pages, 9 captioned figures, matches with the published version