Introduction to noncovariant gauges

The most important single attribute of noncovariant gauges is their ghost-free nature. Although noncovariant gauges have been an integral part of quantum field theory for many decades, their effectiveness in the quantization of non-Abelian theories and their broad range of applicability have only recently been appreciated by theorists at large. The purpose of this review is to explain and illustrate the essential characteristics of some typical noncovariant gauges, such as the axial gauge, the planar gauge, the light-cone gauge, and the temporal gauge. The author's aim is to acquaint the reader not only with the basic properties of these ghost-free gauges, but also with their deficiencies and advantages over covariant gauges, their computational idiosyncrasies, and their dominant areas of application.