Effect of Virtual Pairs on the Inter-quark Potential

Abstract

We use the variational method, in a reformulated Hamiltonian formalism of QCD, to derive the wave equation for a heavy quark-antiquark system using a trial state that contains a component with a virtual light quark pair. We examine the quark-antiquark potential in the non-relativistic limit using an approximate trial ground-state wave function. We find that the potential exhibits a confining character due to the inclusion of the virtual pair component in the trial state.