Colour transparency: a novel test of QCD in nuclear interactions

Abstract

Colour transparency is a cute and indispensable property of QCD as the gauge theory of strong interaction. CT tests of QCD consist of production of the perturbative small-sized hadronic state and measuring the strngth of its non-perturbative diffraction nteraction in a nuclear matter. The energy depenednce of the final- state interaction in a nuclear matter probes a dynamical evolution from the perturbative small-sized state to the full-sized nonperturbative hadron. QCD observables of CT experiments correspond to a novel mechanism of scanning of hadronic wave functions from the large nonperturbative to the small perturbative size. In these lectures, which are addressed to experimentalists and theorists, I discuss the principle ideas of CT physics and the physics potential of the hadron and electron facilities in the > 10 GeV energy range. The special effort was made to present the material in the pedagigical and self-consistent way, with an emphasis on the underlying rich quantum-mechanical interference phenomena.