Strong coupling constant. 12π ( 22 2n f ) ln Q 2 2. The spa1al separa1on between quarks goes as ! = " Q 2

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1 Strong coupling constant In quantum field theory, the coupling constant is an effec1ve constant, which depends on four- momentum Q 2 transferred. For strong interac1ons, the Q 2 dependence is very strong (gluons - as the field quanta - carry color and they can couple to other gluons). A first- order perturba1ve QCD calcula1on (valid at very large Q 2 ) gives: running coupling constant! α s ( Q 2 ) = α s = g2 4π 12π ( 22 2n f ) ln Q 2 2 / Λ QCD ( ) n f =6 number of quark flavors Λ QCD a parameter in QCD (~0.22 GeV), an infrared cutoff The spa1al separa1on between quarks goes as! = " Q 2 Therefore, for very small distances and high values of Q 2, the inter- quark coupling decreases, vanishing asympto1cally. In the limit of very large Q 2, quarks can be considered to be free (asympto1c freedom). On the other hand, at large distances, the inter- quark coupling increases so it is impossible to detach individual quarks from hadrons (confinement). Asympto1c freedom was described in 1973 by Gross, Wilczek, and Politzer (Nobel Prize 2004).

2 It is customary to quote α s at the 91 GeV energy scale (the mass of the Z boson)

3 Chiral symmetry For massless quarks, QCD Lagrangian preserves helicity. Indeed, since a massless quark travels at the speed of light, the handedness or chirality of the quark is independent of any Lorentz frame from which the observa1on is made. L QCD = L QCD (ψ L )+ L QCD (ψ R ) The mass term explicitly breaks the chiral symmetry as: the QCD interaction does not couple the left and right-handed quarks m q ψ q ψ q = m q ψ ql ψ qr + m q ψ qr ψ ql The main origin of the chiral symmetry breaking, however, may be described in terms of the fermion condensate (vacuum condensate of bilinear expressions involving the quarks in the QCD vacuum) formed through nonperturbative action of QCD gluons. Spontaneous symmetry breaking due to the strong low-energy QCD dynamics, which rearranges the QCD vacuum: ψ ql ψ qr 3 Λ QCD 0

4 QCD vacuum In QED vacuum polariza1on effects are extremely weak, because the electron has a small charge and a non- zero rest mass. On the other hand, the QCD gluons are massless, and their strong interac1on is not damped by a small parameter. As a result, the QCD vacuum polariza1on effect is extremely strong, and the empty space is not empty at all - it must contain a soup of spontaneously appearing, interac1ng, and disappearing gluons. Moreover, in the soup there also must be pairs of virtual quark- an1quark pairs that are also color- charged, and emit and absorb more virtual gluons. It turns out that the QCD ground state of an empty space is extremely complicated. At present, we do not have any glimpse of a possibility to find the vacuum wave func1on analy1cally. Some ideas of what happens are provided by the QCD lamce calcula1ons, in which the gluon and quark fields are discre1zed on a four- dimensional lamce of space- 1me points, and the differen1al field equa1ons are transformed into finite- difference equa1ons solvable on a computer. hep:// The typical four- dimensional structure of gluon- field configura1ons averaged over in describing the vacuum proper1es of QCD. The volume of the box is 2.4 by 2.4 by 3.6 fm, big enough to hold a couple of protons.

5 Color, Gluons Gluons are the exchange par1cles which couple to the color charge. They carry simultaneously color and an1color. red antigreen antiblue blue antired green What is the total number of gluons? According to SU 3, 3x3 color combina1ons form a singlet and an octet. The octet states form a basis from which all other color states can be constructed. The way in which these eight states are constructed from colors and an1colors is a maeer of conven1on. One possible choice is: The color singlet: RG, RB, GB, GR, BR, BG, 1/ 2 ( RR GG ), 1/ 6 RR + GG 2 BB ( ) 1/ 3 RR + GG + BB ( ) is invariant with respect of a re- defini1on of the color names (rota1on in color space). Therefore, it has no effect in color space and cannot be exchanged between color charges.

6 emission of a gluon by a quark q q + g splitting of a gluon into a quark-antiquark pair g q + q self-coupling of gluons g g + g g + g g + g hep://

7 Quarks In 1968, deep inelas5c sca7ering experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center showed that the proton contained much smaller, point- like objects and was therefore not an elementary par1cle Flavor A t t z S C B T Q(e) Mc 2 (GeV) u (up) d (down) s (strange) c (charm) b (bottom) t (top) ±1 The least massive are u- and d-quarks (hence the lightest baryons and mesons are made exclusively of these two quarks) Each quark has baryon number A=1/3. Strange quark carries a quantum number called strangeness S. Strange particles (such as kaons) carry this quark Six antiquarks complement the list Quarks are all fermions; they carry half-integer spins d- and u-quarks form an isospin doublet Strong interactions conserve the total number of each type of quarks. However, quarks can be transformed from one flavor to another through weak interactions (CKM matrix!). τ + u = d τ d = u

8 meson baryon! # # π + = " # # $ u R d R u B d B u G d G Meson can exist in three different color combina1ons. The actual pion is a mixture of these color states. By exchange of gluons, the color combina1on con1nuously changes. g b g r g b g b r g g b g r

9 Can a) 4-quark b) 5-quark systems exist according to QCD? The Quark Song heps://

10 hep://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:neutronqcdanima1on.gif

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12 Hadrons baryons fermions made up of three quarks must have half- integer spins mesons bosons made up of quark- an1quarks * must have integer spins * Bosons can be annihilated; strong interac1ons conserve the # of quarks p + p γ + γ particle-antiparticle annihilation particle and antiparticle have opposite charges, baryon numbers, etc. they must have opposite intrinsic parities they must have opposite isospins charge number Q = t 0 + A 2 baryon number τ ± (hadron) τ ± (q i ) A i=1 third component of isospin u!! u d!! d C C