  The Schrodinger wave functional for the d=3+1 SU(N) vacuum is a partition
function constructed in d=4; the exponent 2S in the square of the wave
functional plays the role of a d=3 Euclidean action. We start from a
gauge-invariant conjecture for the infrared-dominant part of S, based on
dynamical generation of a gluon mass M in d=4. We argue that the exact leading
term, of O(M), in an expansion of S in inverse powers of M is a d=3
gauge-invariant mass term (gauged non-linear sigma model); the next leading
term, of O(1/M), is a conventional Yang-Mills action. The d=3 action that is
the sum of these two terms has center vortices as classical solutions. The d=3
gluon mass, which we constrain to be the same as M, and d=3 coupling are
related through the conjecture to the d=4 coupling strength, but at the same
time the dimensionless ratio in d=3 of mass to coupling squared can be
estimated from d=3 dynamics. This allows us to estimate the QCD coupling
$\alpha_s(M^2)$ in terms of this strictly d=3 ratio; we find a value of about
0.4, in good agreement with an earlier theoretical value but a little low
compared to QCD phenomenology. The wave functional for d=2+1 QCD has an
exponent that is a d=2 infrared-effective action having both the
gauge-invariant mass term and the field strength squared term, and so differs
from the conventional QCD action in two dimensions, which has no mass term.
This conventional d=2 QCD would lead in d=3 to confinement of all color-group
representations. But with the mass term (again leading to center vortices),
N-ality = 0 mod N representations are not confined.
