Gauss's law, gauge invariance, and long-range forces in QCD

Abstract

We use a unitary operator constructed in earlier work to transform the Hamiltonian for QCD in the temporal ($A_0=0$) gauge into a representation in which the quark field is gauge-invariant, and its elementary excitations -- quark and antiquark creation and annihilation operators -- implement Gauss's law. In that representation, the interactions between gauge-dependent parts of the gauge field and the spinor (quark) field have been transformed away and replaced by long-range non-local interactions of quark color charge densities. These long-range interactions connect SU(3) color charge densities through an infinite chain of gauge-invariant gauge fields either to other SU(3) color charge densities, or to a gluon "anchor". We discuss possible implications of this formalism for low-energy processes, including confinement of quarks that are not in color singlet configurations.

9 pages, LaTeX, uses REVTeX

References in corpus (1)

• On the Wavefunctional for Two Heavy Color Sources in Yang-Mills Theory

Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Quark confinement and color transparency in a gauge-invariant formulation of QCD
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• Gauge-invariant fields in the temporal gauge, Coulomb-gauge fields, and the Gribov ambiguity
• Topology of the gauge-invariant gauge field in two-color QCD
• Quark Confinement and the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect
• Plasmon interactions in the quark-gluon plasma
• QCD in the Spatial Axial Gauge
• Gauge-invariant quark and gluon fields in QCD: dynamics, topology, and the Gribov ambiguity