Aspects of (de-)confinement and chiral symmetry breaking
Prof. Dr. Christian Fischer (Institut für Kernphysik, Darmstadt)

I review recent results from functional methods on gauge invariant observables of QCD. In the first part of the talk I discuss the structure of the quark-gluon interaction and its impact on the pattern of chiral symmetry breaking and the masses and decay constants of light mesons. In the second part I discuss aspects of the chiral and the deconfinement transition in finite temperature QCD.