Quark motional effects on the interquark potential in baryons

TL;DR

This study investigates how the motion of light quarks affects the interquark potential in baryons using a non-relativistic potential model based on lattice QCD data, revealing a reduction in effective string tension due to quark dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of quark motional effects on interquark potential in baryons using a first-principles derived three-quark potential and a variational method.

Findings

Effective string tension between heavy quarks is reduced due to light-quark motion.

Reduction stems from geometrical differences between inter-quark distance and flux-tube length.

The phenomenon is likely a general property of baryons.

Abstract

We study the heavy-heavy-light quark ($QQq$) system in a non-relativistic potential model, and investigate the quark motional effect on the inter-two-quark potential in baryons. We adopt the Hamiltonian with the static three-quark potential which is obtained by the first-principle calculation of lattice QCD, rather than the two-body force in ordinary quark models. Using the renormalization-group inspired variational method in discretized space, we calculate the ground-state energy of $QQq$ systems and the light-quark spatial distribution. We find that the effective string tension between the two heavy quarks is reduced compared to the static three-quark case. This reduction of the effective string tension originates from the geometrical difference between the inter-quark distance and the flux-tube length, and is conjectured to be a general property for baryons.