Quarks, atoms, and the 1/N expansion
DOI: 10.1063/1.2914163
Most particle physicists now believe that protons, neutrons, and other strongly interacting particles are built from more basic constituents known as “quarks” and “gluons,” which interact according to the rules of a relativistic quantum field theory known as “quantum chromodynamics.”
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References
1. The 1/N expansion developed from the spherical model of T. H. Berlin and M. Kac, Phys. Rev. 86, 821 (1952),
and was formulated in a more modern version by H. E. Stanley, Phys. Rev. 176, 718 (1968).https://doi.org/PHRVAO2. QCD: The first application to QCD was by G. ‘t Hooft, Nucl. Phys. B72, 461 (1974);
G. ‘t Hooft, B75, 461 (1974).
Some recent reviews of the 1/N expansion in QCD, from different points of view, are: G. Rossi and G. Veneziano, Nucl. Phys. B123, 507 (1977);
G. F. Chew and C. Rosenzweig, Phys. Reports 41C, No. 5 (1978);
A. de Rujula, talk at the 1979 European Physical Society Conference (CERN preprint);
S. Coleman, Erice Lectures, 1979 (to appear);
E. Witten, Nucl. Phys. B160, 57 (1979).3. Planar diagrams: There is a certain amount of literature by now on the problem of trying to sum planar diagrams. One particularly interesting paper is E. Brezin, C. Itzykson, G. Parisi, and J. B. Zuber, Comm. Math. Phys. 59, 35 (1978).https://doi.org/CMPHAY
4. Atomic physics: A recent study of the 1/N expansion in atomic physics is L. D. Mlodinow and N. Papanicolaou, “SO(2,1) Algebra and the Large N Expansion in Quantum Mechanics,” Berkeley preprint, November 1979.
More about the authors
Edward Witten, Harvard University.
