Condensates in Quantum Chromodynamics and the Cosmological Constant

Abstract

Casher and Susskind have noted that in the light-front description, spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is a property of hadronic wavefunctions and not of the vacuum. Here we show from several physical perspectives that, because of color confinement, quark and gluon QCD condensates are associated with the internal dynamics of hadrons. We discuss condensates using condensed matter analogues, the AdS/CFT correspondence, and the Bethe-Salpeter/Dyson-Schwinger approach for bound states. Our analysis is in agreement with the Casher and Susskind model and the explicit demonstration of "in-hadron" condensates by Roberts et al., using the Bethe-Salpeter/Dyson-Schwinger formalism for QCD bound states. These results imply that QCD condensates give {\it zero} contribution to the cosmological constant, since all of the gravitational effects of the in-hadron condensates are already included in the normal contribution from hadron masses.