Does the effective Lagrangian for low-energy QCD scale?

Abstract

QCD is not an approximately scale invariant theory. Hence a dilaton field is not expected to provide a good description of the low-energy dynamics associated with the gluon condensate. Even if such a field is introduced, it remains almost unchanged in hadronic matter at normal densities. This is because the large glueball mass together with the size of the phenomenological gluon condensate ensure that changes to that condensate are very small at such densities. Any changes in hadronic masses and decay constants in matter generated by that condensate will be much smaller that those produced directly by changes in the quark condensate. Hence masses and decay constants are not expected to display a universal scaling.