Color confinement is the concept that particles that possess color charges (quarks and glouns) can not be found freely, and only color-free combinations can be observed.
This is a tag for color confinement.
Questions tagged [confinement]
204 questions
37
votes
4 answers
Why have our eyes not evolved to see "gluons"?
The photons are the propagators for QED, and we rely on photons to see the world around us.
The gluon is the propagator in QCD. Why have our eyes not evolved to see gluons (either on top of being able to "see" photons, or instead of)?
DarthPlagueis
- 1,654
36
votes
2 answers
What does it mean that there is no mathematical proof for confinement?
I see this all the time* that there still doesn't exist a mathematical proof for confinement. What does this really mean and how would a sketch of a proof look like?
What I mean by that second question is: what are the steps one needs to prove in…
Physics_maths
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25
votes
2 answers
Why is the Yang–Mills existence and mass gap problem so fundamental?
Ref: Yang–Mills existence and mass gap
Can anyone please explain why the Yang–Mills Existence and Mass Gap problem is so important / fundamental to contemporary mathematics (and, presumably, theoretical / mathematical physics)?
If possible, please…
Anonymous
- 421
25
votes
1 answer
"S-duality" between confinement and the Higgs mechanism?
I feel picked by the second to last sentence in this answer to a question about what would happen if EM and QCD were spontaneously broken, which says
"In fact, there is a sense in theoretical physics in which confinement is complementary to…
Dilaton
- 9,771
19
votes
1 answer
Inverse square rule for strong forces
Most of the forces induced by a point particle follows the $1/r^2$ rule. Then why does the strong force not obey it?
STAIN
- 235
19
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2 answers
How far can we separate two bound quarks?
If we try to separate two quarks bound into a meson or a hadron, the energy in the gluon field eventually will be large enough to spawn a quark-antiquark pair.
How far can we stretch that gluon field before it "snaps"? What's the average distance?…
Calmarius
- 8,428
16
votes
2 answers
About free quarks and confinement
I simply know that a single free quark does not exist. What is the reason that we can not get a free quark?
If we can't get a free quark then what is single-top-quark?
Curious
- 1,073
16
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2 answers
Why doesn't the color force between two quarks have an inverse square law?
From what I understand the color force between two quarks doesn't decrease with distance. Why is it that the color force doesn't decrease with the square of the distance if there are three dimensions of space?
Anders Gustafson
- 2,071
16
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1 answer
Are "confinement" and "asymptotic freedom" two sides of the same coin?
On Wikipedia it says that the two peculiar properties of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) are: confinement and asymptotic freedom.
Asymptotic freedom is the idea that at low energies we cannot use perturbation theory because the coupling becomes…
Hunter
- 5,328
15
votes
3 answers
How has quark electric charge been directly measured?
How has quark electric charge been directly measured when quarks are never directly observed in isolation (due to a phenomenon known as color confinement)?
harosch
- 151
15
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3 answers
Are there any Baryons that have quark-antiquark combinations?
I'll be honest, I only have a Highschool education, so there might be something obvious I'm overlooking. However particle physics is of massive Interest to me.
My question is, I know there are unstable quark-antiquark pairs that form Mesons, but…
RudyJD
- 481
14
votes
2 answers
Is a 6-quark particle viable?
It is my understanding (which may be flawed) that protons and neutrons are stable because the 3 (R, G, and B) quarks form a "white" color singlet. Wouldn't 6 quarks or even 9 quarks create a white singlet? What about RGBGR?
Rick
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14
votes
5 answers
Why aren't all quarks clumped together in one giant hadron?
As far as I am aware, the strong interaction is attractive only, and its carrier, the gluon, is massless meaning it has unlimited range. If this is the case, how come we only observe quarks in pairs and triplets? What's preventing every quark in the…
eaeaa1232
- 451
14
votes
1 answer
Weak isospin confinement?
According to the Wikipedia article on color confinement:
The current theory is that confinement is due to the force-carrying gluons having color charge [...],
i.e. because the gauge group is non-abelian. But that is equally true for the weak…
Ergil
- 295
14
votes
1 answer
What is a precise mathematical statement of the Yang-Mills and mass gap Clay problem?
I am a mathematician writing a statement of each of the Clay Millennium Prize problems in a formal proof assistant. For the other problems, it seems quite routine to write the conjectures formally, but I am having difficulty stating the problem on…
Thales
- 141