  We probe the SU(3) vacuum using eigenvectors of the Dirac operator with an
arbitrary phase for the temporal boundary condition. We consider configurations
with topological charge |Q| = 1 near the QCD phase transition and at low
temperatures on a torus. For all our ensembles we show that the zero-mode of
the Dirac operator changes its position as one changes the phase of the
boundary condition. For ensembles near the QCD phase transition our results
closely resemble the behavior of zero-modes for Kraan - van Baal solutions of
the classical Yang-Mills equations where the individual lumps are interpreted
as monopoles. Our findings near T_c and on the torus show that for both cases
an excitation with topological charge |Q| = 1 is built from several separate
lumps.

High Energy Physics - Lattice