quantum chromodynamics (QCD), quantum field theory quantum field theory, study of the quantum mechanical interaction of elementary particles and fields . Quantum field theory applied to the understanding of electromagnetism is called quantum electrodynamics (QED), and it has proved spectacularly successful in
..... Click the link for more information. that describes the properties of the strong interactions strong interactions, actions between elementary particles mediated, or carried, by gluons. They are responsible for the binding of protons and neutrons in the nucleus and interactions between quarks.
..... Click the link for more information. between quarks and between protons proton, elementary particle having a single positive electrical charge and constituting the nucleus of the ordinary hydrogen atom. The positive charge of the nucleus of any atom is due to its protons.
..... Click the link for more information. and neutrons neutron, uncharged elementary particle of slightly greater mass than the proton . It was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932. The stable isotopes of all elements except hydrogen and helium contain a number of neutrons equal to or greater than the number of protons.
..... Click the link for more information. in the framework of quantum theory quantum theory, modern physical theory concerned with the emission and absorption of energy by matter and with the motion of material particles; the quantum theory and the theory of relativity together form the theoretical basis of modern physics.
..... Click the link for more information. . Quarks possess a distinctive property called color that governs their binding together to form other elementary particles elementary particles, the most basic physical constituents of the universe.

Basic Constituents of Matter

Molecules are built up from the atom , which is the basic unit of any chemical element .
..... Click the link for more information. . Analogous to electric charge in charged particles, color is of three varieties, arbitrarily designated as red, blue, and yellow, and—analogous to positive and negative charges—three anticolor varieties. Just as positively and negatively charged particles form electrically neutral atoms, colored quarks form particles with no net color. Quarks interact by emitting and absorbing massless particles called gluons gluon, an elementary particle that mediates, or carries, the strong, or nuclear, force. In quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the quantum field theory of strong interactions , the interaction of quarks (to form protons , neutrons , and other elementary particles ) is
..... Click the link for more information. , each of which carries a color-anticolor pair. Eight kinds of gluons are required to transmit the strong force between quarks, e.g., a blue quark might interact with a yellow quark by exchanging a blue-antiyellow gluon.

The concept of color was proposed by American physicist Oscar Greenberg and independently by Japanese physicist Yoichiro Nambu in 1964. The theory was confirmed in 1979 when quarks were shown to emit gluons during studies of high-energy particle collisions at the German national laboratory in Hamburg. QCD is nearly identical in mathematical structure to quantum electrodynamics quantum electrodynamics (QED), quantum field theory that describes the properties of electromagnetic radiation and its interaction with electrically charged matter in the framework of quantum theory .
..... Click the link for more information. (QED) and to the unified theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions advanced by American physicist Steven Weinberg Weinberg, Steven, 1933–, American nuclear physicist, b. New York City, Ph.D. Princeton Univ., 1957. He helped develop important theories of electromagnetic and nuclear particle interaction that were experimentally verified in 1982–83 when Carlo Rubbia and
..... Click the link for more information. and Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam Salam, Abdus, 1926–96, Pakistani physicist. After attending Government College at Lahore, he received a Ph.D. from Cambridge (1952). He taught in Lahore for three years before returning to England, first teaching mathematics at Cambridge (1954–57), then
..... Click the link for more information. .

Bibliography

See F. J. Yndurain, Quantum Chromodynamics: An Introduction to the Theory of Quarks and Gluons (1983); G. Altarelli, The Development of Perturbative QCD (1994); W. Greiner and A. Schafer, Quantum Chromodynamics (1994).

quantum chromodynamics (QCD)

Theory that describes the action of the strong force. The strong force acts only on certain particles, principally quarks that are bound together in the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus, as well as in less stable, more exotic forms of matter. Quantum chromodynamics has been built on the concept that quarks interact via the strong force because they carry a form of “strong charge,” which has been given the name “colour.” The three types of charge are called red, green, and blue, in analogy to the primary colours of light, though there is no connection with the usual sense of colour.

Quantum chromodynamics

A theory of the strong (“nuclear”) interactions among quarks, which are regarded as fundamental constituents of matter. Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) seeks to explain why quarks combine in certain configurations to form the observed patterns of subnuclear particles, such as the proton and pi meson. According to this picture, the strong interactions among quarks are mediated by a set of force particles known as gluons. Strong interactions among gluons may lead to new structures that correspond to as-yet-undiscovered particles. The long-studied nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei is regarded as a collective effect of the elementary interactions among constituents of the composite protons and neutrons. See Nuclear structure

Quantum chromodynamics has not yet been subjected to precise experimental tests. Several qualitative predictions of quantum chromodynamics do seem to have been borne out. Part of the esthetic appeal of the theory is due to the fact that quantum chromodynamics is nearly identical in mathematical structure to quantum electrodynamics (QED) and to the unified theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions. This resemblance encourages the hope that a unified description of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions may be at hand. See Electroweak interaction, Quantum electrodynamics, Weak nuclear interactions

Gauge theories

At the heart of current theories of the fundamental interactions is the idea of gauge invariance. It is widely believed that gauge theories constructed to embody various symmetry principles represent the correct quantum-mechanical descriptions of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions. See Symmetry laws (physics)

Color

Although the idea that the strongly interacting particles are built up of quarks brought new order to hadron spectroscopy and suggested new relations among mesons and baryons, the constituent description brought with it a number of puzzles. According to the Pauli exclusion principle, identical spin-½ particles cannot occupy the same quantum state. As a consequence, the observed baryons such as Δ⁺⁺ (uuu) and &OHgr;^- (sss), which would be composed of three identical quarks in the same state, would seem to be forbidden configurations. To comply with the Pauli principle, it is necessary to make the three otherwise identical quarks distinguishable by supposing that every flavor of quark exists in three varieties, fancifully labeled by the colors red, green, and blue. Color may be regarded as the strong-interaction analog of electric charge. Color cannot be created or destroyed by any of the known interactions. Like electric charge, it is said to be conserved. See Color (quantum mechanics), Exclusion principle

In the face of evidence that color could be regarded as the conserved charge of the strong interactions, it was natural to seek a gauge symmetry that would have color conservation as its consequence. An obvious candidate for the gauge symmetry group is the unitary group SU(3), now to be applied to color rather than flavor. The theory of strong interactions among quarks that is prescribed by local color gauge symmetry is known as quantum chromodynamics. The mediators of the strong interactions are eight massless spin-1 bosons, one for each generator of the symmetry group. These strong-force particles are named gluons because they make up the “glue” that binds quarks together into hadrons. Gluons also carry color and hence have strong interactions among themselves.

Asymptotic freedom

The theoretical description of the strong interactions has historically been inhibited by the very strength of the interaction, which renders low-order perturbative calculations untrustworthy. However, in 1973 it was found that in many circumstances the effective strength of the interaction in Yang-Mills theories becomes increasingly feeble at short distances, a property known as asymptotic freedom. For quantum chromodynamics, this remarkable observation implies that the interaction between quarks becomes weak at small separations. This discovery raises the hope that some aspects of the strong interactions might be treated by using familiar computational techniques that are predicated upon the smallness of the interaction strength.

Quarkonium

It was suggested in 1974 that the bound system of an extremely massive quark with its antiquark would be so small that the strong force would be extremely feeble. In this case, the binding between quark and antiquark is mediated by the exchange of a single massless gluon, and the spectrum of bound states resembles that of an exotic atom composed of an electron and an antielectron (positron) bound electromagnetically in a Coulomb potential generated by the exchange of a massless photon. Since the electron-positron atom is known as positronium, the heavy quark-antiquark atom has been called quarkonium. Two families of heavy quark-antiquark bound states, the &psgr;/J system composed of charmed quarks and the &Ugr; system made up of b quarks, have been discovered. Both have level schemes characteristic of atomic spectra, which have been analyzed by using tools of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics developed for ordinary atoms. The atomic analogy has proved extremely fruitful for studying the strong interaction. See Charm, J/psi particle, Positronium

Lattice models

To deal with the existence and properties of the hadrons themselves, it is necessary to devise a new computational approach that does not break down when the interaction becomes strong. The most promising method has been the crystal lattice formulation of the theory. By considering the values of the color field only on individual lattice sites, it is possible to use many of the techniques developed in statistical physics for the study of spin systems such as magnetic substances. See Elementary particle, Fundamental interactions, Gluons, Ising model, Quantum field theory, Quarks, Standard model, Statistical mechanics, Strong nuclear interactions