  We compute the energy of the ground state and a low lying excitation of the
gluonic field in the presence of static quark -anti-quark ($\qq$) sources. We
show that for separation between the sources less then a few fm the gluonic
ground state of the static $\qq$ system can be well described in terms of a
mean field wave functional with the excited states corresponding to a single
quasi-particle excitation of the gluon field. We also discuss the role of many
particle excitations relevant for large separation between sources.
