Cubic Casimir operator of SU$_C$(3) and confinement in the nonrelativistic quark model

Abstract

Only two-body [${\rm F}_{i} \cdot {\rm F}_{j}$] confining potentials have been considered, thus far, in the quark model without gluons, which by construction can only depend on the quadratic Casimir operator of the colour SU(3) group. A three-quark potential that depends on the cubic Casimir operator is added to the quark model. This results in improved properties of $q^3$ colour non-singlet states, which can now be arranged to have (arbitrarily) higher energy than the singlet, and the "colour dissolution/anticonfinement" problem of the ${\rm F}_{i} \cdot {\rm F}_{j}$ model is avoided.