Quantum chromodynamics
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Revision as of 11:14, 28 May 2004 by Barbara Shack (Talk | contribs)
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the physical theory describing one of the fundamental forces, the strong interaction. It was first proposed in the early 1970s by David Politzer and by Frank Wilczek and David Gross who also realized that QCD had a very important feature called asymptotic freedom. It uses quantum field theory to describe the interaction of quarks and gluons.
According to this theory, there is an SU(3) gauge group and that the quarks are SU(3) triplet Dirac fermion fields. QCD is a non-perturbative theory due to effects like confinement, fermion condensates and instantons.
Most theoretical work on QCD is done with lattice models.
See also
- Gauge theory
- Strong interaction
- QCD lattice model
- Fermion condensate
- Quantum field theory
- Gell-Mann matrices
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Quantum_chromodynamics" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
