Constituent gluons and the static quark potential

Journal Article · Fri Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Physical Review D

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.93.074506· OSTI ID:1248164

Greensite, Jeff ^[1]; Szczepaniak, Adam P. ^[2]

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1. San Francisco State Univ., CA (United States)
2. Indiana Univ., Bloomington, IN (United States); Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), Newport News, VA (United States)

We suggest that Hamiltonian matrix elements between physical states in QCD might be approximated, in Coulomb gauge, by "lattice-improved" tree diagrams; i.e. tree diagram contributions with dressed ghost, transverse gluon, and Coulomb propagators obtained from lattice simulations. Such matrix elements can be applied to a variational treatment of hadronic states which include constituent gluons. As an illustration and first application of this hybrid approach, we derive a variational estimate of the heavy quark potential for distances up to 2.5 fm. The Coulomb string tension in SU(3) gauge theory is about a factor of four times greater than the asymptotic string tension. In our variational approach, using for simplicity a single variational parameter, we can reduce this overshoot by nearly the factor required. The building blocks of our approach are Coulomb gauge propagators, and in this connection we present new lattice results for the ghost and transverse gluon propagators in position space.

• Research Organization: Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), Newport News, VA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
• DOE Contract Number: FG03-92ER40711; FG0287ER40365; AC05-06OR23177
• OSTI ID: 1248164
• Report Number(s): JLAB-THY-15-2057; DOE/OR/23177-3371; arXiv:1505.05104; PRVDAQ
• Journal Information: Physical Review D, Vol. 93, Issue 7; ISSN 2470-0010
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English