Of Quarks and Gluons..
Of Quarks and Gluons..
Even though much of nuclear physics is concerned with point nucleons interacting through a nuclear
force, this picture is at best a decent approximation.
As you are all aware, the nucleon is not a fundamental particle in the normal sense of the word, but
all strongly interacting matter is made up of quark and gluons. In this part of the course we shall look at
the effects of substructure on nuclear physics. In other words, we are thus concentrating on the Quantum
Chromo Dynamics (QCD) part of the Standard Model, Fig. 2.1.
• Confinement:
Quarks and gluons can not be liberated: they interact more strongly at lower energies
• Asymptotic freedom: The higher the energy we probe a strong-force system at, the more the re-
sponse is like a system of free particles
• Self-interactions: The force carriers (gluons) interact amongst themselves. Can we have glueballs?
• Colour Charge: Quarks carry a colour charge (red, green, blue); gluons charge-anticharge, but not
neutral.
Figure 2.1: The particles making up the standard model. We have not included the putative Higgs particle.
3
4 CHAPTER 2. OF QUARKS AND GLUONS...
• Flavour symmetry: Quarks come in flavours linked to the families: 6 flavours in 3 families
• Chiral symmetry breaking: the symmetry of the theory for light quarks (between left and right-
handed quarks) is broken in vacuum
• The known number of flavours N f = 6 (in three families of two), but usually we concentrate
on the light flavours. Depending on the situation that is 2 (u and d) or 3 (also including s)
• The number of colours is exactly equal to Nc = 3.
• gluons are “flavourless”, and carry a colour-anticolour index, excluding the scalar combina-
tion, which gives 9 − 1 = 8 allowed combinations.
3. Relativity plays an important role. Relativistic fermions satisfy the Dirac wave equation
∂
(ih̄cα · ∇ + βmc2 )ψ( x, t) = ih̄ ψ( x, t) (2.1)
∂t
where we require that if we repeat the left hand operation we get the standard relativistic energy-
momentum relation,
This last relation requires α1,2,3 and β to be four by four matrices. That sounds rather esoteric, but
means that ψ has four components. We shall interpret this as a factor of 2 from spin up or down,
and a second 2 from particle or antiparticle: Since the Dirac equation is linear, we can either have
the positive or negative solution for E in the relation E2 = p2 c2 + m2 c4 .
All negative energy states are assumed to be filled (“the Dirac sea” in analogy with the Fermi sea),
and holes in the Dirac sea are interpreted as antiparticles (in our case antiquarks); particles in the
positive energy states are assumed to be quarks.
4. For a massless quark spin is either parallel or antiparallel to the motion: Chiral symmetry
Since particles of zero mass “move with the speed of light”, the direction of movement is a Lorentz
invariant. Thus it makes sense to define our basis states to be the so-called chiral (handed) states,
where the spin of the electron is either parallel or anti-parallel to the direction of motion, rather
than up or down. There is a symmetry that transforms the right-handed into left-handed particles:
Chiral symmetry
Figure 2.2: The relativistic spectrum on the left. It is interpreted as filed and empty states as seen in the
middle; the excitation of an electron from the filed to empty states is interpreted as the excitation of a
particle-hole pair.
for any real θ between 0 and 2π. The system also has an unstable vacuum state corresponding to φ = 0.
This symmetry is called “U (1)” the group of complex phases. It corresponds to a choice of phase of φ.
However, once the system falls into one specific stable vacuum state (corresponding to a choice of θ) this
symmetry will be lost or spontaneously broken. There is still a crucial remnant of the symmetry: if we
look for changes in the field along the bottom of the valley, we see that they do not change the energy.
Such fluctuation give rise to a massless (i.e., m = 0) mode called a “Goldstone mode”. Fluctuations in the
radial direction take energy, and thus correspond to massive modes. The appearance of Goldstone modes
is the smoking gun for spontaneous symmetry breaking.
In the case of QCD the basic model sketched above holds for light quarks: for a zero-mass fermion
we can define our Dirac basis states as chiral (handed) states. Left-handed states occur when the spin of
a particle is parallel to its direction of motion; right-handed when they are antiparallel. In the case we
consider only the u and d quarks (since they are indeed approximately massless), chiral symmetry is the
statement of how we can mix left and right-handed states of quarks and antiquarks without changing the
physics: there are two rotational symmetries associated with this, and one of those two, called SU (2)V
6 CHAPTER 2. OF QUARKS AND GLUONS...
0 ΦL
ΦR0
(the vector SU (2)) is spontaneously broken. The number of flat directions at the bottom of the potential
landscape is now three, and we interpret the three pions as the three Goldstone modes. Pions are clearly
not massless (their mass is about 138 MeV/c2 ) but they do come in an isospin 1 multiplet, so there are
three of them. Also their mass is much lower than any other state (by about a factor of 4), so in some
sense they are approximately massless. We do understand qualitatively and quantitatively how to derive
the pion mass from the quark mass, the Gell-Mann–Oakes–Renner relation, so this connection is pretty
watertight.
2.3.1 Symmetries
2.3.1.1 Isospin
The basic symmetry due to QCD that plays a crucial role in nuclear physics is the isotopic spin symmetry
(isospin). Basically, if we look at the nucleon and the proton masses they are remarkably close,
which is a hint of possible symmetry! If we further study the mass of the lightest meson, the pion, we see
that these come in three charge states, and once again their masses are remarkably similar,
Most importantly the Interactions between nucleons (p and n) is independent of charge, they only
depend on the nucleon character of these particles: “the strong interactions see only one nucleon and one
pion”.
In that case a continuous transformation between the neutron an a proton, and between the pions is a
symmetry–the physics is unchanged
The symmetry that was proposed (by Wigner) is an internal symmetry like spin symmetry called
isotopic spin or isospin. A rotation of spin and angular momentum is linked to a rotation of space; isospin
is an abstract rotation in isotopic space, and leads to states with isotopic spin I = 1/2, 1, 3/2, . . .. Define
third component of isospin of a “fundamental” particle as
Q = e( I3 + B),
π+
0
V
π−
µ+
+
V
Figure 2.4: Left: decay of a neutral kaon. The neutral kaon leaves no track, but a “V” of tracks appears
when it decays into two charged pions . The right-hand image shows the decay of a charged kaon into a
muon and a neutrino. The decay occurs where the track appears to bend to the left abruptly: The neutrino
is invisible.
Notice that the energy levels of these particles are split by an electric force, as ordinary spins split under
a magnetic force.
π + + p → Λ0 + K 0
0 + 0 = −1 + 1
Λ0 → π − + p
−1 6 = 0 + 0
does not conserve strangeness (but it conserves baryon number). Is found to take much longer, about
10−10 s.
We can accommodate this quantity in the charge-isospin relation,
B+S
Q = e( I3 + )
2
Clearly for S = −1 and B = 1 we get a particle with I3 = 0. This allows us to identify the Λ0 as an
I = 0, I3 = 0 particle, which agrees with the fact that there are no particles of different charge and a
similar mass and strong interaction properties.
The kaons come in three charge states K ± , K0 with masses mK± = 494 MeV, mK0 = 498 MeV. Further
analysis shows that the the K + is the antiparticle of K − , but K0 is not its own antiparticle! So we need four
particles, and the assignments are S = 1, I = 1/2 for K0 and K − , S = −1, I = 1/2 for K + and K̄0 .
It was argued by Gell-Mann and Ne’eman in 1961 that a natural extension of isospin symmetry would
be an SU(3) symmetry. One of the simplest representations of SU(3) is 8 dimensional. A particle with
8 CHAPTER 2. OF QUARKS AND GLUONS...
S
0 +
K K
1
π
−
π η
0 0
π
+
0
−1
− 0
K K
−1 0 1 I3
Y
n p
1
Σ
−
Σ Λ
0 0
Σ
+
0
−1
− 0
Ξ Ξ
−1 0 1 I3
I = I3 = S = 0 is missing. Such a particle is known, and is called the η 0 . The breaking of the symmetry
can be seen from the following mass table:
In order to have the scheme make sense we need to show its predictive power. This was done by
studying the nucleons and their excited states. Since nucleons have baryon number one, they are labelled
with the “hyper-charge” Y, Y = ( B + S). The nucleons form an octet with the single-strangeness particles
Λ and σ and the doubly-strange cascade particle Ξ.
Mn = 938 MeV
M p = 939 MeV
MΛ0 = 1115 MeV
MΣ+ = 1189 MeV
MΣ0 = 1193 MeV
MΣ− = 1197 MeV
MΞ0 = 1315 MeV
MΞ− = 1321 MeV
All these particles were known before the idea of this symmetry. The first confirmation came when
studying the excited states of the nucleon. Nine states were easily incorporated in a decuplet, and the
2.4. THE QUARK MODEL OF STRONG INTERACTIONS 9
Y
∆ ∆ ∆ ∆
− 0 + ++
1
Σ Σ
*− *0
Σ
*+
0
Ξ
*−
Ξ
*0
−1
Ω
−
−2
−1 0 1
I3
1.7
1.6
Mc (GeV)
1.5
2
1.4
1.3
1.2
−2 −1 0 1
Y
tenth state (the Ω− , with strangeness -3) was predicted. It was found soon afterwards at the predicted
value of the mass.
The masses are
M∆ = 1232 MeV
MΣ∗ = 1385 MeV
MΞ∗ = 1530 MeV
MΩ = 1672 MeV
(Notice almost that we can fit these masses as a linear function in Y. This was of great help in finding
the Ω.)
Table 2.1: a
Quark f S Q/e I I3 S B
1
Up u 2 + 23 1
2 + 12 0 1
3
1
Down d 2 − 13 1
2 - 12 0 1
3
1
Strange s 2 − 13 0 0 -1 1
3
1 1
s
Y d u Y
0 0
u d
−1 s −1
−1 0 1 I3 −1 0 1 I3
Figure 2.9: a
S
ds us
1
uu−dd
0 ud ud
uu+dd−2ss
−1
us ds
−1 0 1 I3
Y
udd uud
1
−1
dss uss
−1 0 1 I3
( u u u
)
( u u u
)
Figure 2.12: The ∆++ in the quark model.
Once we have three flavours of quarks, we can ask the question whether more flavours exists. At the
moment we know of three generations of quarks, corresponding to three generations (pairs). These give
rise to SU(4), SU(5), SU(6) flavour symmetries. Since the quarks get heavier and heavier, the symmetries
get more-and-more broken as we add flavours.
Quark label spin Q/e mass (GEV/c2 )
1
Down d 2 − 13 0.35
1
Up u 2 + 23 0.35
1
Strange s 2 − 13 0.5
1
Charm c 2 + 23 1.5
1
Bottom b 2 − 13 4.5
1
Top t 2 + 23 93
q g g g
g g
q g g g
Figure 2.13: The basic building blocks for QCD Feynman diagrams
Figure 2.14: Top quark and anti top quark pair decaying into jets, visible as collimated collections of
particle tracks, and other fermions in the CDF detector at Tevatron.
pudding” model, Fig. 2.16 a homogeneously positively charged sphere with electrons (the plums) at cer-
tain positions, maybe in a shell/shells [3]. This predicts a rather weak scattering of other charged particles,
such as the α particle, by such atoms. After initial exciting experiments by Geiger and Marsden [5], which
showed Thompson was wrong, Rutherford [4] analysed this process in terms of Rutherford scattering
from a tiny positively charged nucleus, mainly ignoring the weak effect of the electrons. In 1913, Geiger
and Marsden [6] produced a data set that shows that Rutherford’s analysis was likely correct, see Fig. 2.17.
This figure shows an excess of events at large scattering angles which is not predicted by Thomson.
The technique to derive the cross section is illustrative, and Rutherford’s derivation is remarkable simple
[I’ll leave it as an exercise to derive the first part]; from the expression relating the impact parameter b to
the scattering angle θ,
ZZ 0 e2
b= cot θ/2
4πe0 E
Figure 2.17: The original data from Ref. [6] compared with the Rutherford scattering formula
. The grey line is an extrapolation from the small angle data, and corresponds roughly to what we would
expect in Thomson’s model.
14 CHAPTER 2. OF QUARKS AND GLUONS...
dσ = −2πbdb
2
ZZ 0 e2 1 sec2 θ/2
= 2π cot θ/2 θ
4πe0 E 2 d
2
ZZ 0 e2
= sec4 θ/24πsinθ/2 cos θ/2dθ/2
4πe0 E
2
ZZ 0 e2
= sec4 θ/2(4πsinθdθ )
4πe0 E
2
ZZ 0 e2
= sec4 θ/2dΩ
4πe0 E
2
ZZ 0 αh̄c
= sec4 θ/2dΩ.
E
This formula is identical for the quantum mechanical elastic scattering of two spinless particles. The
last line is particularly useful since it is independent of the electromagnetic units used; many papers use
Gauss rather than SI units (where 4πe0 = 1).
In early accelerator driven high-energy physics, there were important attempts to try to do similar
experiments by scattering electrons from a proton (or even a proton of a proton, but we shall not consider
this here). Once again, we shall ignore centre-of-mass effects, since an electron is much lighter than a
proton.
Of course we shall have to take into account relativity, which leads to a modification of the cross
section, essentially only due to the effect of the spin of the electron. The standard formula is due to Mott
[?]. The derivation, using the Dirac equation, can be found in text books (e.g., [?], pg 173/174).
Zα)2 E2
dσ 2 2 θ
= 1 − v sin ,
dΩ Mott 4k2 sin4 4θ 2
k
with k = k f = |ki |, v = E [Units... h̄c]. If we scatter electrons from an extended charged object
elastically, we get
dσ dσ
= | F (q)|2
dΩ dΩ Mott
Here the form-factor F (q) is the Fourier transform of the charge density,
F (q) = ρ(r )eiq·r d3 r.
We are actually not able to directly measure the Mott cross section in ep scattering–the proton picks up
momentum as well, and has more structure than we allow for above (especially, since the proton has a
magnetic moment there are magnetic as well as electric interactions).
We define two basic variables ν and x (after Broken)
2Mc2 ν = W 2 c4 + Q2 c2 − M2p c4 ,
x = Q2 /(2Mν).
Here W is the invariant mass (see appendix) of the hadron after scattering (since it could have been excited
internally), Q2 is the four-momentum transfer in the reaction (again see appendix), and M p is the proton
mass. Note that ν has the dimension of energy, and that [exercise] in the proton’s rest frame ν = E − E0 ,
the energy transfer in the reaction. As we shall see in a minute, it is x we are really interested in!
2.5. EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE 15
Figure 2.18: The 6◦ data from Ref. [7, 8] compared with the elastic scattering cross section
Bjorken first proposed showed that in inelastic (i.e., the outgoing energy E0 is not equal to E) relativistic
scattering of a proton the most general behaviour of the cross section is given by
d2 σ α2 Q2
1 2 2 2 2
= cos ( θ/2 ) F2 ( x, Q ) + sin ( θ/2 ) F1 ( x, Q ) .
dΩdE0 2E2 sin4 (θ/2) ν xM2 c2
16 CHAPTER 2. OF QUARKS AND GLUONS...
Bibliography
[3] J.J. Thomson. "On the Structure of the Atom: an Investigation of the Stability and Periods of Oscil-
lation of a number of Corpuscles arranged at equal intervals around the Circumference of a Circle;
with Application of the Results to the Theory of Atomic Structure". DOI: 10.1080/14786440409463107
Published in: journal Philosophical Magazine Series 6, Volume 7, Issue 39 March 1904 , pages 237 -
265
[4] E. Rutherford, Philosophical Magazine Series 6, Volume 21, Issue 125 May 1911 , pages 669
- 688 doi:10.1080/14786440508637080, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content db=all con-
tent=a910584901
[5] H. Geiger and E. Marsden, "On a Diffuse Reflection of the α-Particles". Proceedings of the Royal
Society, Series A 82 (1909) 495-500. doi:10.1098/rspa.1909.0054
[6] H. Geiger and E. Marsden, “The Laws of Deflexion of a Particles through Large An-
gles” Philosophical Magazine Series 6, Volume 25, Number 148 April 1913, pages
http://www.chemteam.info/Chem-History/GeigerMarsden-1913/GeigerMarsden-1913.html
[7] Bloom, E. D., Coward, D. H., DeStaebler, H. , Drees, J. , Miller, G. , Mo, L. W., Taylor, R. E., Breiden-
bach, M. , Friedman, J. I., Hartmann, G. C., Kendall, H. W., “High-Energy Inelastic e − p Scattering
at 6◦ and 10◦ ”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 23 (1969) 930–934, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.23.930.
[8] Breidenbach, M. , Friedman, J. I., Kendall, H. W., Bloom, E. D., Coward, D. H., DeStaebler, H. , Drees,
J. , Mo, L. W., Taylor, R. E., “Observed Behavior of Highly Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering”, Phys.
Rev. Lett., 23, (1969) 935–939, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.23.935.
[9] Quigg, Chris, "Elementary Particle Physics: Discoveries, Insights, and Tools", in Quarks, Quasars
and Quandries, Ed. Aubrecht, G., American Association of Physics Teachers, 1987.
[10] Michael Riordan “The Discovery of Quarks” Science 256 (1992) 1287 - 1293 DOI: 10.1126/sci-
ence.256.5061.1287 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/256/5061/1287.pdf
[11] Quark Model: C. Amsler et al., Phy. Lett. B667, 1 (2008)
http://pdg.lbl.gov/2008/reviews/quarkmodrpp.pdf
17
18 BIBLIOGRAPHY