The Static Baryon Potential

Abstract

Using state of the art lattice techniques we investigate the static baryon potential. We employ the multi-hit procedure for the time links and a variational approach to determine the ground state with sufficient accuracy that, for distances up to $\sim 1.2$ fm, we can distinguish the $Y$- and $\Delta$- Ans\"atze for the baryonic Wilson area law. Our analysis shows that the $\Delta$-Ansatz is favoured. This result is also supported by the gauge-invariant nucleon wave function which we measure for the first time.