Spontaneous breaking of residual gauge symmetries on the lattice

Lattice gauge theories are considered with a partial axial gauge fixing along one direction only. This leaves a residual gauge symmetry that is still local in three directions but now global in one. It is found that this $N^{d-1}$ fold symmetry (on an $N^d$ lattice) breaks spontaneously at weak coupling with the gauge field elements on links averaged over 1-d chains along the gauge-fixing direction as order parameters. This phase transition is observed with Monte-Carlo simulations for both 3-d Z2 and 4-d SU(2) pure gauge theories and appears to be coincident with the deconfinement transition. This work calls into question the equivalence of different gauges in certain circumstances.