Running Masses in the Nucleon and its Resonances

TL;DR

This paper discusses recent progress in understanding how confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in QCD contribute to nucleon masses and structure, supported by theoretical and experimental advances.

Contribution

It highlights new continuum QCD methods revealing the role of quark correlations and confinement in nucleon mass generation and structure.

Findings

Emergence of a novel understanding of confinement in quantum field theory

Development of hadron wave functions connected to QCD

Experimental support for theoretical predictions in form factors

Abstract

An overarching scientific challenge for the coming decade is to discover the meaning of confinement, its relationship to dynamical chiral symmetry breaking (DCSB) - the origin of visible mass - and the connection between them. In progressing toward meeting this challenge, significant progress has been made using continuum methods in QCD. For example, a novel understanding of gluon and quark confinement and its consequences has begun to emerge from quantum field theory; a clear picture is being drawn of how hadron masses emerge dynamically in a universe with light quarks; and ground-state hadron wave functions with a direct connection to QCD are becoming available, which reveal that quark-quark correlations are crucial in hadron structure. There is growing experimental support for this body of predictions in both elastic and nucleon-to-resonance-transition form factors.