The Wilson loop in Yang-Mills theory in the general axial gauge

We test the unified-gauge formalism by computing a Wilson loop in Yang-Mills theory to one-loop order. The unified-gauge formalism is characterized by the abritrary, but fixed, four-vector N_\mu, which collectively represents the light-cone gauge (N^2 = 0), the temporal gauge (N^2 > 0), the pure axial gauge (N^2 < 0) and the planar gauge (N^2 < 0). A novel feature of the calculation is the use of distinct sets of vectors, \{ n_{\mu}, n_{\mu}^{\ast} \} and \{N_{\mu}, N_{\mu}^{\ast}\}, for the path and for the gauge-fixing constraint, respectively. The answer for the Wilson loop is independent of N_{\mu}, and agrees numerically with the result obtained in the Feymman gauge.