First study of the three-gluon static potential in Lattice QCD

TL;DR

This paper presents the first lattice QCD study of the three-gluon static potential, comparing different geometric and color configurations to inform models of three-gluon glueballs.

Contribution

It develops a Wilson loop for the three-gluon system and compares starfish and triangle models across geometries and color structures in lattice QCD.

Findings

First estimation of three-gluon static potential in lattice QCD

Comparison of starfish and triangle models for three-gluon systems

Analysis of symmetric and antisymmetric color structures

Abstract

We estimate the potential energy for a system of three static gluons in Lattice QCD. This is relevant for the different models of three-body glueballs have been proposed in the literature, either for gluons with a constituent mass, or for massless ones. A Wilson loop adequate to the static hybrid three-body system is developed. We study different spacial geometries, to compare the starfish model with the triangle model, for the three-gluon potential. We also study two different colour structures, symmetric and antisymmetric, and compare the respective static potentials. A first simulation is performed in a $24^3 \times 48$ periodic Lattice, with $\beta=6.2$ and $a \sim 0.072$ fm.