No radial excitations in low energy QCD. II. The shrinking radius of hadrons

Abstract

We discuss the implications of our prior results obtained in our companion paper (Eur. Phys. J. C (2013). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2298-9). Inescapably, they lead to three laws governing the size of hadrons, including in particular protons and neutrons that make up the bulk of ordinary matter: (a) there are no radial excitations in low-energy QCD; (b) the size of a hadron is largest in its ground state; (c) the hadron’s size shrinks when its orbital excitation increases. The second and third laws follow from the first law. It follows that the path from confinement to asymptotic freedom is a Regge trajectory. It also follows that the top quark is a free, albeit short-lived, quark.