Probing the quark-gluon interaction with hadrons

TL;DR

This paper develops a unified Dyson-Schwinger/Bethe-Salpeter framework to study mesons and baryons, revealing insights into quark-gluon interactions and highlighting areas needing higher-order corrections.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic truncation of the QCD effective action that includes all tensor structures, providing a comprehensive approach to hadron structure.

Findings

Ground state hadron masses align with quark-core predictions

Discrepancies in meson sector indicate missing higher-order effects

Partial insensitivity of some masses to detailed quark-gluon interactions

Abstract

We present a unified picture of mesons and baryons in the Dyson-Schwinger/Bethe-Salpeter approach, wherein the quark-gluon and quark-(anti)quark interaction follow from a systematic truncation of the QCD effective action and includes all its tensor structures. The masses of some of the ground state mesons and baryons are found to be in reasonable agreement with the expectations of a `quark-core calculation', suggesting a partial insensitivity to the details of the quark-gluon interaction. However, discrepancies remain in the meson sector, and for excited baryons, that suggest higher order corrections are relevant and should be investigated following the methods outlined herein.