Non-perturbative parton mass for the gluon

A gauge invariant, non-local observable is constructed in pure gauge theory, which is identical to the gluon propagator in a particular gauge, permitting to define a non-perturbative parton mass for the gluon. This mass can be shown to be related to the 1P-1S mass splitting of heavy quarkonia. Preliminary numerical results for 3d SU(2) yield m_A=0.37(6)g^2, while from the \bar{b}b spectrum one infers m_A\approx 420 MeV for QCD.