Gauge Invariance Structure of Quantum Chromodynamics

Perturbative QeD may be subdivided into separately gauge-invariant sectors according to the projection of non-abelian color weights onto linearly independent basis elements. We exploit the general Lie group structure of the theory to give an algorithm for finding these gauge-invariant sets and present several examples of its use. The planar sector and the systematks of the non-planar corrections are defined for any gauge theory. Our gauge set classification has implications for QCD bound states, finite order perturbative QeD calculations, the study of QCD infrared singularities and for the question of convergence of the perturbation series.