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QCD Made Simple

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QCD Made Simple QCD MADE SIMPLE uantum chromodynamics, Quantum chromodynamics is to the presence or motion of Qfamiliarly called QCD, is color charge, very similar to the modern theory of the conceptually simple. Its realization the way photons respond to strong interaction.1 Historic- in nature, however, is usually electric charge. ally its roots are in nuclear physics and the description of very complex. But not always. Quarks and gluons ordinary matter—understand- One class of particles that ing what protons and neu- carry color charge are the trons are and how they inter- Frank Wilczek quarks. We know of six differ- act. Nowadays QCD is used to ent kinds, or “flavors,” of describe most of what goes on at high-energy accelerators. quarks—denoted u, d, s, c, b, and t, for: up, down, Twenty or even fifteen years ago, this activity was strange, charmed, bottom, and top. Of these, only u and d commonly called “testing QCD.” Such is the success of the quarks play a significant role in the structure of ordinary theory, that we now speak instead of “calculating QCD matter. The other, much heavier quarks are all unstable. backgrounds” for the investigation of more speculative A quark of any one of the six flavors can also carry a unit phenomena. For example, discovery of the heavy W and Z of any of the three color charges. Although the different bosons that mediate the weak interaction, or of the top quark flavors all have different masses, the theory is per- quark, would have been a much more difficult and uncer- fectly symmetrical with respect to the three colors. This tain affair if one did not have a precise, reliable under- color symmetry is described by the Lie group SU(3). standing of the more common processes governed by Quarks are spin-1/2 point particles, very much like QCD. With regard to things still to be found, search electrons. But instead of electric charge, they carry color strategies for the Higgs particle and for manifestations of charge. To be more precise, quarks carry fractional elec- supersymmetry depend on detailed understanding of pro- tric charge (+ 2e/3 for the u, c, and t quarks, and – e/3 for duction mechanisms and backgrounds calculated by the d, s, and b quarks) in addition to their color charge. means of QCD. For all their similarities, however, there are a few Quantum chromodynamics is a precise and beautiful crucial differences between QCD and QED. First of all, theory. One reflection of this elegance is that the essence the response of gluons to color charge, as measured by the of QCD can be portrayed, without severe distortion, in the QCD coupling constant, is much more vigorous than the few simple pictures at the bottom of the box on the next response of photons to electric charge. Second, as shown page. But first, for comparison, let me remind you that the in the box, in addition to just responding to color charge, essence of quantum electrodynamics (QED), which is a gluons can also change one color charge into another. All generation older than QCD, can be portrayed by the sin- possible changes of this kind are allowed, and yet color gle picture at the top of the box, which represents the charge is conserved. So the gluons themselves must be interaction vertex at which a photon responds to the pres- able to carry unbalanced color charges. For example, if ence or motion of electric charge.2 This is not just a absorption of a gluon changes a blue quark into a red metaphor. Quite definite and precise algorithms for calcu- quark, then the gluon itself must have carried one unit of lating physical processes are attached to the Feynman red charge and minus one unit of blue charge. graphs of QED, constructed by connecting just such inter- All this would seem to require 3 × 3 = 9 different action vertices. color gluons. But one particular combination of gluons— In the same pictorial language, QCD appears as an the color-SU(3) singlet—which responds equally to all expanded version of QED. Whereas in QED there is just charges, is different from the rest. We must remove it if one kind of charge, QCD has three different kinds of we are to have a perfectly color-symmetric theory. Then charge, labeled by “color.” Avoiding chauvinism, we might we are left with only 8 physical gluon states (forming a choose red, green, and blue. But, of course, the color color-SU(3) octet). Fortunately, this conclusion is vindicat- charges of QCD have nothing to do with physical colors. ed by experiment! Rather, they have properties analogous to electric charge. The third difference between QCD and QED, which is In particular, the color charges are conserved in all phys- the most profound, follows from the second. Because glu- ical processes, and there are photon-like massless parti- ons respond to the presence and motion of color charge cles, called color gluons, that respond in appropriate ways and they carry unbalanced color charge, it follows that gluons, quite unlike photons, respond directly to one another. Photons, of course, are electrically neutral. FRANKWILCZEK is the J. Robert Oppenheimer Professor of Physics at Therefore the laser sword fights you’ve seen in Star Wars the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Next month wouldn’t work. But it’s a movie about the future, so maybe he moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take up the Herman Feshbach they’re using color gluon lasers. Chair of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We can display QCD even more compactly, in terms of 22 AUGUST 2000 PHYSICS TODAY © 2000 American Institute of Physics, S-0031-9228-0008-010-8 its fundamental equations (figure 1). You should not nec- essarily be too impressed by that. After all, Richard Feyn- QED and QCD in Pictures. man showed that you could write down the Equation of he physical content of the Universe in a single line: U = 0, where U, the total QED Tquantum electrodynam- unworldliness,3 is a definite function. It’s the sum of con- ics is summarized in the tributions from all the laws of physics: algorithm that associates a g probability amplitude with U = U + U +... , Newton Gauss each of its Feynman graphs, 2 depicting a possible process where, for instance, UNewton =(F – ma) and UGauss = E – r)2. in spacetime. The Feynmanؒ∇) So we can capture all the laws of physics we know, graphs are constructed by and all the laws yet to be discovered, in this one unified linking together interaction equation. But it’s a complete cheat, of course, because vertices of the type at left, there is no useful algorithm for unpacking U, other than which represents a point to go back to its component parts. The equations of QCD, charged particle (lepton or quark) radiating a photon. To displayed in figure 1, are very different from Feynman’s get the amplitude, one multiplies together a kinematic satirical unification. Their complete content is out front, “propagator” factor for each line and an interaction factor and the algorithms that unpack them flow from the for each vertex. Reversing a line’s direction is equivalent to unambiguous mathematics of symmetry. replacing a particle by its antiparticle. A remarkable feature of QCD, which we see in figure 1, Quantum chromodynamics can be similarly summa- is how few adjustable parameters the theory needs. There rized, but with a more elaborate set of ingredients and ver- is just one overall coupling constant g and six quark-mass tices, as shown below. Quarks (antiquarks) carry one pos- itive (negative) unit of color charge. Linear superpositions parameters mj for the six quark flavors. As we shall see, the coupling strength is a relative concept; and there are of the 9 possible combinations of gluon colors shown many circumstances in which the mass parameters are below form an SU(3) octet of 8 physical gluon types. not significant. For example, the heavier quarks play only A qualitatively new feature of QCD is that there are a tiny role in the structure of ordinary matter. Thus QCD vertices describing direct interactions of color gluons with approximates the theoretical ideal: From a few purely one another. Photons, by contrast, couple only to electric conceptual elements, it constructs a wealth of physical charge, of which they carry none themselves. consequences that describe nature faithfully.4 QCD Describing reality Quarks Gluons At first sight it appears outrageous to suggest that the equations of figure 1 or, equivalently, the pictures in the box, can describe the real world of the strongly interacting particles. None of the particles that we’ve actually seen appear in the box, and none of the particles that appear in 3 colors the box has ever been observed. In particular, we’ve never 6 flavors seen particles carrying fractional electric charge, which (u, d, s, c, b, t) we nonetheless ascribe to the quarks. And certainly we haven’t seen anything like gluons—massless particles mediating long-range strong forces. So if QCD is to describe the world, it must explain why quarks and glu- ons cannot exist as isolated particles. That is the so-called Vertices confinement problem. Besides confinement, there is another qualitative dif- Makes ference between the observed reality and the fantasy life world of quarks and gluons. This difference is quite a bit interesting more subtle to describe, but equally fundamental. I will not be able to do full justice to the phenomenological argu- ments here, but I can state the essence of the problem in its final, sanitized theoretical form.
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