Does gluon oscillation violate color conservation?

In summary: Finally, one can compute the Gell-Mann matrices for all the quark and antiquark pairs in the system and show that they all have the same eigenvalues and eigenvectors, thus confirming that the color charge is conserved.In summary, all three approaches demonstrate that color is conserved.
  • #1
Zarathustra0
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Since the actual mass-eigenstate gluons are not the simple red-antired, red-antigreen, etc. but rather linear combinations thereof, is color charge still absolutely conserved? It seems that if we (perhaps naïvely) treat a gluon as simply fluctuating from one of the color-anticolor combinations of which it is a superposition to another, this would result in the possibility that, e.g., a red up quark and antigreen up antiquark could annihilate into a red-antigreen gluon, which could then oscillate into a green-antired gluon and produce a green quark and antired antiquark, violating color conservation.

If this approach of oscillating gluons is in fact naïve to the point of inaccuracy and we simply imagine this gluon as a superposition of red-antigreen and green-antired in equal proportions (1/√2), ignoring the collapse into one state or the other upon observation, we have a sort of colorless state, with equal parts red and antired and equal parts green and antigreen. Really, regardless of how the intermediate gluon itself is viewed, its being a superposition would seem to allow the transition of a red quark and antigreen antiquark to a green quark and antired antiquark.
 
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  • #2
There are no gluon color oscillations. A gluon is produced in one of the 8 SU(3) color combinations, and it stays there until it is destroyed.
 
  • #3
This I understand, but what I'm wondering is what these superpositions mean in terms of actual interactions. An individual quark or antiquark has a definite color (correct?), so if they annihilate to a gluon, which of the eight gluons do they make? Since the color and anticolor of a gluon are probabilistic upon observation, would the color and anticolor of a quark-antiquark pair produced by this gluon also be probabilistic, and if so, wouldn't this allow for color nonconservation?
 
  • #4
Just because something is not in an eigenstate does not mean it is not conserved. All three components of angular momentum are conserved, but you'll never see anything in an Lx, Ly, Lz eigenstate.
 
  • #5
There are several approaches which demonstrate that color is strictly conserved.

1) Looking at complicated Feynman diagrams one could introduce a cut at constant but arbitrary time. Analyzing the total color of all "particles" defined at this cut (no matter whether "real" or "virtual") it always corresponds to the color of the initial state; this is due to the color coupling rules at the individual vertices.

2) Formulating QCD in a Hilbert space framewerk with gauge fixing and therefore restricting to physical states one finds that these physical states are all color neutral (= in the singulet representation of SU(N)color); in addition all physical operators (e.g. the Hamiltonian creating time evolution and the S-matrix) are gauge invariant and therefore commute with the gauge symmetry generators.
 

FAQ: Does gluon oscillation violate color conservation?

1. What is gluon oscillation?

Gluon oscillation refers to the phenomenon where gluons, which are the particles responsible for the strong force that binds quarks together, can change into different types of gluons.

2. What is color conservation?

Color conservation is a fundamental principle in particle physics that states that the total amount of color charge (a property of particles that determines their interactions with the strong force) must remain constant in a given interaction or process.

3. How does gluon oscillation relate to color conservation?

Gluon oscillation has been proposed as a mechanism for explaining how color conservation can be violated in certain processes. This is because the different types of gluons produced during oscillation have different color charges, and their exchange can lead to a net change in the total amount of color charge.

4. Is gluon oscillation experimentally proven?

There is currently no experimental evidence for gluon oscillation, as it is a theoretical concept that has not yet been observed or confirmed. However, there are ongoing experiments at facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider that may provide evidence for or against this idea in the future.

5. How does gluon oscillation affect our understanding of the strong force?

If gluon oscillation is proven to be a real phenomenon, it would have significant implications for our understanding of the strong force and the way quarks interact with each other. It would also provide new insights into the fundamental structure of matter and the behavior of subatomic particles.

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