My Lame understanding of Quantum Chromodynamics

My Lame understanding of Quantum Chromodynamics

By Katherine Lightwood

Today again after completing my shift I came back to my institute and got into my reading lists. And somehow I found an article about Higgs boson. Well, I know it sounds kind of 'extremely nerdy' for a student of graphic design to read about Higgs boson. But, seems like I can't help it. So here, I've shared some of my understanding of Quantum Chromodynamics.
21 grams that is the all electrons in your body if you weigh like an average healthy human being.

Now, all that mass comes from Higgs mechanism, which means that as your electrons are traveling through space-time, they interact with Higgs field, and it is that that gives them their mass. It slows them down and stops them from traveling at the speed of light. But most of your mass doesn't come from Higgs mechanism. And neither does all of the stuff that you see around you. The mass is coming from somewhere quite different. And this is because of most of your mass comes from neutrons and protons and they are not fundamental particles. they are made of constituent particles called quarks. Now, the theory that describes quarks and their interaction with each other through gluons is called "quantum chromodynamics". And 'chromo' is the Greek word for color.

So in some way these objects are meant to carry color charge. But they are much much smaller than the wavelength of visible light, so there's no way that they are actually colored. But it's a useful analogy that helps us think about how they interact and the particles that they can make up. Now the rules are pretty simple.
And that is in order for a particle to exist, it must be colorless or white and you can accomplish that in two different ways.
You could make three quarks in where each one is a different color red, green and blue. So, overall they combine to produce white.  
Or you could use a quark and an antiquark where one is a color like green and other is it's anti color let's say magenta.  

Now to imagine this, let's imagine an uneven ground. And that ground has undulations in it which represents the fluctuations in the gluon field. But you have to imagine this uneven ground is sort of rippling and this bumps coming and going like waves. Now, that's really important because to get rid of those fluctuations actually takes energy. And that's an important part of binding the quarks together.

The existence of quarks actually suppresses the gluon fluctuations and creates something called flux tube which is an area where there is nothing in the vacuum and that's in between quarks and antiquarks. And that pairs them up and creates what is called a meson, the quark, and antiquark pair.
Now, what's interesting about the flux tube is that as these quarks become more separated, the flux tube remains the same diameter and the same sort of depth of suppression of the field, which means that the force doesn't actually increase, it's not like an elastic band.

The force is the same that is pulling these quarks back together. But you are putting more work in as you move these quarks and antiquarks further apart. and so for a time, people thought that these quarks are always going to be confined however far you move them. And you are just going to get a really long flux tube. But what actually happens is, you put in enough energy that you can actually a new quark and antiquark pair. And that's what happens inside us and every other thing in quantum level. 

So, that was my thought of the day. To see more posts like this make sure to visit our main page. And Do not forget to visit our institute's page to know more about graphic design, 3D, animation courses and other awesome stuff. Till then good day to you.

Katherine Lightwood