Hadron-hadron interaction from SU(2) lattice QCD

TL;DR

This study uses SU(2) lattice QCD to analyze hadron-hadron interactions, revealing short-range repulsion driven by quark exchange and a universal long-range attraction, with findings supporting the constituent-quark model.

Contribution

It provides the first lattice QCD evidence that quark-exchange diagrams induce short-range repulsion and identifies a universal long-range attraction in scalar diquark interactions.

Findings

Short-range repulsion arises solely from quark-exchange processes.

Repulsion strength increases with lighter quark masses, similar to color-magnetic interactions.

A universal, quark-mass independent long-range attraction is observed.

Abstract

We evaluate interhadron interactions in two-color lattice QCD from Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes on the Euclidean lattice. The simulations are performed in quenched SU(2) QCD with the plaquette gauge action at $\beta = 2.45$ and the Wilson quark action. We concentrate on S-wave scattering states of two scalar diquarks. Evaluating different flavor combinations with various quark masses, we try to find out the ingredients in hadronic interactions. Between two scalar diquarks ($u C\gamma_5 d$, the lightest baryon in SU(2) system), we observe repulsion in short-range region, even though present quark masses are not very light. We define and evaluate the "quark-exchange part" in the interaction, which is induced by adding quark-exchange diagrams, or equivalently, by introducing Pauli blocking among some of quarks. The repulsive force in short-distance region arises only from the "quark-exchange part", and disappears when quark-exchange diagrams are omitted. We find that the strength of repulsion grows in light quark-mass regime and its quark-mass dependence is similar to or slightly stronger than that of the color-magnetic interaction by one-gluon-exchange (OGE) processes. It is qualitatively consistent with the constituent-quark model picture that a color-magnetic interaction among quarks is the origin of repulsion. We also find a universal long-range attractive force, which enters in any flavor channels of two scalar diquarks and whose interaction range and strength are quark-mass independent. The weak quark-mass dependence of interaction ranges in each component implies that meson-exchange contributions are small and subdominant, and the other contributions, {\it ex.} flavor exchange processes, color-Coulomb or color-magnetic interactions, are considered to be predominant, in the quark-mass range we evaluated.