2002/09/25 by Scott Chapman, Dr. Scott Chapman, Chapman, Dr. Scott
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/0209216
arxiv created 2002/09/25 · openalex publication_date 2002/09/25 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A new background field formulation of QCD is presented in which the background gluon field is not a classical field, but an operator made up of quantized quark fields. This background field allows colorless quark states to form exact quantum solutions of the QCD equations of motion for any value of the coupling constant. When matrix elements of the Hamiltonian are calculated in the context of these solution states, quark fields and gluon fluctuations completely decouple. Due to decoupling, gluon fluctuations around the background field can be ignored and only the quark part of the Hamiltonian need be considered when comparing colorless quark states. Despite nonlinear terms involving the background field, this pure quark Hamiltonian is completely diagonalizable and leads to energies for colorless quark configurations that are infinitely more negative than those for colored quark configurations. In this way, the method provides an explanation for confinement and can be used to calculate hadron masses directly from QCD.