The relation between the fundamental scale controlling high-energy interactions of quarks and the proton mass
- Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), Newport News, VA (United States)
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Univ. de Costa Rica, San Jose (Costa Rica)
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) provides a fundamental description of the physics binding quarks into protons, neutrons, and other hadrons. QCD is well understood at short distances where perturbative calculations are feasible. Establishing an explicit relation between this regime and the large-distance physics of quark confinement has been a long-sought goal. A major challenge is to relate the parameter Λs, which controls the predictions of perturbative QCD (pQCD) at short distances, to the masses of hadrons. Here we show how new theoretical insights into QCD's behavior at large and small distances lead to an analytical relation between hadronic masses and Λs. The resulting prediction, Λs = 0.341 ± 0.024 GeV agrees well with the experimental value 0.339 ± 0.016 GeV. Conversely, the experimental value of Λs can be used to predict the masses of hadrons, a task which had so far only been accomplished through intensive numerical lattice calculations, requiring several phenomenological input parameters.
- Research Organization:
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 1177766
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-PUB-16241
- Journal Information:
- Nature, Journal Name: Nature
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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