Unveiling the Strong Interaction origin of Baryon Masses with Lattice QCD

Abstract

Both the Higgs mechanism and strong interactions contribute to the masses of visible matter, yet how the six Higgs-generated quark masses and uniform strong interaction strength determine the hundreds of hadron masses remains unclear. Additionally, the role of massless, flavor-neutral gluons on hadron mass formation is central to the unresolved Millennium Prize problem on the mass gap in Yang-Mills theory. Addressing these questions requires advanced simulations on state-of-the-art supercomputers using Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), which offers a rigorous, non-perturbative definition of QCD solvable numerically. Here we present first-principles lattice QCD calculations using comprehensive gauge ensembles that accurately predict ground state spin-1/2 and spin-3/2 baryon masses with light, strange, and charm quarks within 1\% of experimental values. At the \(\overline{\mathrm{MS}}\) 2 GeV scale, our results unveil two fundamental mass generation mechanisms for those baryon masses in QCD: 1) the flavor-dependent enhancement of Higgs contributions, 4-8 for light, 2-3 for strange, and 1.2-1.3 for charm quarks; and 2) the flavor-insensitive contribution 0.8-1.2 GeV from gluon quantum anomaly. This breakthrough significantly advances our comprehension of strong interaction dynamics and the genesis of visible matter's mass.