Lattice QCD Study for the Interquark Force in Three-Quark and Multi-Quark Systems

TL;DR

This study uses lattice QCD to analyze interquark forces in three- and multi-quark systems, confirming the Y-Ansatz for the potential, observing flux-tube formations, and exploring gluonic excitations with implications for quark models.

Contribution

It provides detailed lattice QCD calculations of multi-quark potentials, confirming the Y-Ansatz and flux-tube formation, and introduces the inverse Mercedes Ansatz for gluonic excitations.

Findings

Y-Ansatz describes 3Q potential within 1% accuracy

Flux-tube formation observed in lattice QCD

Gluonic excitation energy around 1 GeV

Abstract

We study the three-quark and multi-quark potentials in SU(3) lattice QCD. From the accurate calculation for more than 300 different patterns of 3Q systems, the static ground-state 3Q potential $V_{\rm 3Q}^{\rm g.s.}$ is found to be well described by the Coulomb plus Y-type linear potential (Y-Ansatz) within 1%-level deviation. As a clear evidence for Y-Ansatz, Y-type flux-tube formation is actually observed on the lattice in maximally-Abelian projected QCD. For about 100 patterns of 3Q systems, we perform the accurate calculation for the 1st excited-state 3Q potential $V_{\rm 3Q}^{\rm e.s.}$ by diagonalizing the QCD Hamiltonian in the presence of three quarks, and find a large gluonic-excitation energy $\Delta E_{\rm 3Q} \equiv V_{\rm 3Q}^{\rm e.s.}-V_{\rm 3Q}^{\rm g.s.}$ of about 1 GeV, which gives a physical reason of the success of the quark model. $\Delta E_{\rm 3Q}$ is found to be reproduced by the ``inverse Mercedes Ansatz'', which indicates a complicated bulk excitation for the gluonic-excitation mode. We study also the tetra-quark and the penta-quark potentials in lattice QCD, and find that they are well described by the OGE Coulomb plus multi-Y type linear potential, which supports the flux-tube picture even for the multi-quarks. Finally, the narrow decay width of penta-quark baryons is discussed in terms of the QCD string theory.