The "hard" problem of strong of interactions

TL;DR

This paper discusses the progress and challenges in understanding strong interactions in physics, highlighting an idealized model that accurately describes reality and reviewing three decades of advancements.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the mathematical formulation of strong interactions and discusses the progress made over the last thirty years.

Findings

The idealized model describes real-world strong interactions accurately.

Progress in managing the problem has increased over three decades.

The question of whether the problem is now 'easy' remains open.

Abstract

This is a write-up of a lecture at the level of a physics colloquium. There exists an idealized mathematical formulation of strong interactions which has no free parameters but is known to describe the real world quite accurately. Over the last three decades the problem has been managed with increasing success. An overview of some facts and a little fiction will be presented, but the question whether the problem can now be considered "easy" will be left unanswered.