The Strong Force

1. 2. Announcements Exam#3 next Monday. (Bring your calculator) HW10 will be posted today. Solutions will be posted Thurs. afternoon (Im not collecting HW#10) Q&A session on Sunday at 5 pm. Tentative course grades will be posted by Tuesday evening. You can do no worse than this grade if you skip the final (but you could do better if you take it) Final Exam, Friday, May 2 10:15 12:15 in Stolkin.

3. 4. 5.

6.

The Strong Force

Why do protons & protons, protons & neutrons, and neutrons & neutrons all bind together in the nucleus of an atom?
Electromagnetic? No, this would cannot cause protons to bind to one another. Gravity ? NO, way too feeble (even weaker than EM force) Need a force which: A) Can overcome the electrical repulsion between protons. B) Is blind to electric charge (i.e., neutrons bind to other neutrons!) Quantum theory of EM Interactions is incredibly precise. That is, the theoretical calculations agree with experimental observations to incredible accuracy.

Build a similar theory of the strong interaction, based on force carriers

Charge
u
Electric charge = +2/3

Electric charge = -1

What does it really mean for a particle to have electric charge ? It means the particle has an attribute which allows it to talk to (or couple to) the photon, the mediator of the electromagnetic interaction. The strength of the interaction depends on the amount of charge. Which of these might you expect experiences a larger electrical repulsion?

u e

u e

Strong Force & Color

u u u
We hypothesize that in addition to the attribute of electric charge, quarks have another attribute known as color charge, or just color for short. The attributes name, color, is just by convention. Its easy to visualize this attribute and how colors combine(coming up) The property of color allows quarks to talk to the mediator of the strong interaction, the gluon (g). Unlike electric charge, we find (experimentally) that there are 3 values for color: We assign these possible values of color to be: red, green, blue Also, unlike Electromagnetism, we find that the carrier of the strong force carries color charge. Recall the photon is electrically neutral!

Comparison Strong and EM force

Property Force Carrier
Mass Charge ? Charge types
Mediates interaction between:

EM
Photon (g)
0 None +, All objects with electrical charge Infinite ( 1/d2)

Strong
Gluon (g)
0 Yes, color charge red, green, blue All objects with color charge 10-14 [m] (inside hadrons)

Range

Color of Hadrons
BARYONS q1 q3 q2 RED + BLUE + GREEN = WHITE or COLORLESS

MESONS
q q q GREEN + ANTIGREEN = COLORLESS RED + ANTIRED = COLORLESS BLUE + ANTIBLUE = COLORLESS A meson can be any one of these combinations ! Hadrons observed in nature are colorless (but there constituents are not)

Color of Gluons
rb rg bg br gb gr rr gg 2bb rr gg
Dont worry about what this means

Each of the 8 color combinations have a color and an anti-color

Color Exchange
Quarks interact by the exchange of a gluon.

Since gluons carry color charge, it is fair to say that the interaction between quarks results in the exchange of color (or color charge, if you prefer) !

Interactions through Exchange of Color Charge

rg rg rg
Emission of Gluon Initially RED (quark) After gluon emission RED-ANTIGREEN (gluon) Re-absorption of Gluon Before gluon absorption RED-ANTIGREEN + GREEN (gluon) (quark) After gluon absorption RED (quark) + GREEN (quark)

Gluons Important Points

Gluons are the force carrier of the strong force. They only interact with object which have color, or color charge. Therefore, gluons cannot interact with leptons because leptons do not have color charge !
e+ q This cannot happen, because the gluon does not interact with objects unless they have color charge! Leptons do not have color charge !

e-

Feynman Diagrams for the Strong Interaction

As before, we can draw Feynman diagrams to represent the strong interactions between quarks. The method is more or less analogous to the case of EM interactions. When drawing Feynman diagrams, we dont show the flow of color charge (oh goody). Its understood to be occurring though. Lets look at a few Feynman diagrams

Feynman Diagrams (Quark Scattering)

u Quark-antiquark Annihilation

d
g

u
Quark-quark Scattering
Could also be Quark-antiquark Scattering or Antiquark-antiquark Scattering

u
g

d
time

Flashback to EM Interactions
Recall that photons do not interact with each other. Why? Because photons only interact with objects which have electric charge, and photons do not have electric charge !
g g g g g This cant happen because the photon only interacts with electrically charged objects !

BUT GLUONS HAVE COLOR CHARGE !!!

Gluons carry the charge of the strong force, which is color charge, or just color !

Ok, so heres where it gets hairy!

Since gluons carry color charge, they can interact with each other ! (Photons cant do that)
Gluon-gluon Scattering
g g g g g

Gluon-gluon Fusion
g g

And quark-gluon interactions as well!

Since both quarks and gluons have color, they can interact with each other !!!
Quark-Antiquark Annihilation u g g u g g

Quark-gluon Scattering

d
g g

Where do the gluons come from ?

Proton
u

The gluons are all over inside hadrons!! In fact there are a lot more than shown here !!! Notice sizes here: In fact quarks are < 1/1000th of the size of the proton, so they are still too big in this picture ! Even protons and neutrons are mostly empty space !!!

u d

~10-15 [m]

Confinement

Since the strong force increases as quarks move apart, they can only get so far

The quarks are confined together inside hadrons.

Hadron jail !

Hadronization (process of forming hadrons)

As quarks move apart, the potential energy stored in the spring increases, until its large enough, to snap and convert its potential energy into mass energy (qq pairs)

Hadrons!
u u u
s s

KK+

u
d
d
d
In this way, you can see that quarks are always confined inside hadrons (thats CONFINEMENT) !

u
d

pp0

d
d

What holds the nucleus together?

The strong force !
Inside the nucleus, the attractive strong force is stronger than the repulsive electromagnetic force. Protons and neutrons both experience the strong force. The actual binding that occurs between proton-proton and proton-neutron and neutron-neutron is the residual of the strong interaction between the constituent quarks.

Food for thought

Recall: Mass of Proton ~ 938 [MeV/c2]
Proton constituents: 2 up quarks: 2 * (5 [MeV/c2]) = 10 [MeV/c2] 1 down quark: 1 * 10 [MeV/c2] = 10 [MeV/c2] Total quark mass in proton: ~ 20 [MeV/c2] Wheres all the rest of the mass ?????

Its incorporated in the binding energy associated with the gluons !

~98% of our mass comes from glue-ons !!!!

Summary (I)
The property which gives rise to the strong force is color charge There are 3 types of colors, RED, GREEN and BLUE. Quarks have color charge, and interact via the mediator of the strong force, the gluon. The gluon is massless like the photon, but differs dramatically in that: It has color charge Its force acts over a very short range (inside the nucleus)

Summary (II)
Because gluons carry color charge, they can interact among themselves. Quarks and gluons are confined inside hadrons because of the nature of the strong force. Only ~50% of a protons energy is carried by the quarks. The remaining 50% is carried by gluons. We learn about the strong force by hadron-hadron scattering experiments.