Di-Quarks and Tri-Quarks on the Lattice

TL;DR

This study uses lattice QCD to observe gluon flux tubes in baryons, demonstrating that quark-diquark strings have the same tension as quark-antiquark strings and sharing similar flux tube profiles.

Contribution

It provides the first lattice QCD evidence that quark-diquark strings exhibit the same string tension as quark-antiquark strings, enhancing understanding of baryon structure.

Findings

Quark-diquark and quark-antiquark strings have identical string tension.

Gluon flux tubes in both configurations have similar radii.

Flux tube profiles show comparable vacuum suppression.

Abstract

The distribution of gluon fields in hadrons is of fundamental interest in QCD. Using lattice QCD we have observed the formation of gluon flux tubes within tri-quark (baryon) systems for a wide variety of spatial distributions of the color sources. In particular we have investigated configurations where two of the quarks are close together and the third quark is some distance away, which approximates a quark plus diquark string. We find that the string tension of the quark-diquark string is the same as that of the quark-antiquark string on the same lattice. We also compare the longitudinal and transverse profiles of the gluon flux tubes for both sets of strings, and find them to be of similar radii and to have similar vacuum suppression.