Light-cone quantization and hadron structure

Conference · Mon Apr 01 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:258144

Brodsky, S J

Quantum chromodynamics provides a fundamental description of hadronic and nuclear structure and dynamics in terms of elementary quark and gluon degrees of freedom. In practice, the direct application of QCD to reactions involving the structure of hadrons is extremely complex because of the interplay of nonperturbative effects such as color confinement and multi-quark coherence. In this talk, the author will discuss light-cone quantization and the light-cone Fock expansion as a tractable and consistent representation of relativistic many-body systems and bound states in quantum field theory. The Fock state representation in QCD includes all quantum fluctuations of the hadron wavefunction, including fax off-shell configurations such as intrinsic strangeness and charm and, in the case of nuclei, hidden color. The Fock state components of the hadron with small transverse size, which dominate hard exclusive reactions, have small color dipole moments and thus diminished hadronic interactions. Thus QCD predicts minimal absorptive corrections, i.e., color transparency for quasi-elastic exclusive reactions in nuclear targets at large momentum transfer. In other applications, such as the calculation of the axial, magnetic, and quadrupole moments of light nuclei, the QCD relativistic Fock state description provides new insights which go well beyond the usual assumptions of traditional hadronic and nuclear physics.

• Research Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 258144
• Report Number(s): SLAC-PUB--7152; CONF-960194--2; ON: DE96012253
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
FORM FACTORS
HADRONS
LIGHT CONE
PHOTOPRODUCTION
QUANTIZATION
QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
QUARK MODEL
QUARKONIUM