New collection celebrates the discovery of asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics
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50 Years of QCD
A new Collection by the Physical Review journals celebrates the 50th anniversary of the discovery of asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics (QCD)—the theoretical basis for the strong force of nature that binds quarks and gluons into hadrons.
By 1973, there was growing interest in explaining the nature of the strong force via the gauge theory QCD. Three papers published that year—two in a June 1973 issue of Physical Review Letters, and one in the November 1973 issue of Physical Review D—demonstrated that such non-Abelian (i.e., noncommutative) gauge theories are "asymptotically free," meaning that the coupling constant becomes smaller at high-energy scales. This key result implies that high-energy QCD processes are perturbatively calculable, and that at low energy the coupling becomes large, in agreement with the observed confinement of quarks.
To mark the 50th anniversary of this significant development in particle and nuclear physics, the editors of the Physical Review journals have curated a collection of landmark papers appearing in our journals. The papers trace key developments in QCD leading up to 1973, and some of the many discoveries since. | | | |
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