The QCD vacuum and its hadronic excitations

Abstract

A survey is given on selected topics of physics in the non-perturbative, hadronic sector of the QCD phase diagramme. Following a brief QCD primer, some highlights of Lattice QCD are summarised. Chiral effective field theory as the low-energy realisation of QCD is reviewed, with applications in pion-pion scattering, the scalar form factor of the nucleon and the interpolation of nucleon properties between lattice QCD results and actual observables. Chiral SU(3) dynamics, incorporating the strange quark, is developed with examples relating to low-energy kaon-nucleon interactions. The quest for quasiparticles in QCD and their correlations, beyond the simple partonic pictures of hadron structure, is discussed and aspects of QCD thermodynamics are explored in this context.