Empirical Consequences of Emergent Mass

TL;DR

This paper explores how emergent mass in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) underpins complex phenomena like atomic nuclei, emphasizing observable effects such as pion distributions and nucleon form factors, and discusses the theoretical basis for mass emergence.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of emergent mass in QCD, linking theoretical concepts with observable phenomena and highlighting its role as a self-stabilizing mechanism.

Findings

Emergent mass explains the stability and structure of atomic nuclei.

Observable effects include pion parton distributions and nucleon electromagnetic form factors.

QCD's effective charge and gluon mass are key to understanding emergent mass.

Abstract

The Lagrangian that defines quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the strong interaction piece of the Standard Model, appears very simple. Nevertheless, it is responsible for an astonishing array of high-level phenomena with enormous apparent complexity, e.g., the existence, number and structure of atomic nuclei. The source of all these things can be traced to emergent mass, which might itself be QCD's self-stabilising mechanism. A background to this perspective is provided, presenting, inter alia, a discussion of the gluon mass and QCD's process-independent effective charge and highlighting an array of observable expressions of emergent mass, ranging from its manifestations in pion parton distributions to those in nucleon electromagnetic form factors.