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Light Cone Quantization And Qcd Phenomenology, Stanley J. Brodsky, David G. Robertson

Physics Faculty Scholarship

In principle, quantum chromodynamics provides a fundamental description of hadronic and nuclear structure and dynamics in terms of their elementary quark and gluon degrees of freedom. In practice, the direct application of QCD to reactions involving the structure of hadrons is complex because of the interplay of nonperturbative effects such as color confinement and multi-quark coherence. A crucial tool in analyzing such phenomena is the use of relativistic light-cone quantum mechanics and Fock state methods to provide tractable and consistent treatments of relativistic many-body systems. We begin with a brief introduction to light-cone field theory, stressing how it may allow …