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Murray Gell-Mann - Quarks as asymptotic states. Missed opportunities (132/200)

4,174 views · Published 12 May 2016 · 1:36 · Indexed 29 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2016 · Science & Technology

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New York-born physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019) was a theoretical physicist. His considerable contributions to physics include the theory of quantum chromodynamics. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. [Listener: Geoffrey West; date recorded: 1997]

TRANSCRIPT: [GW] In terms of your previous thinking about confinement and so on, what was your thinking about the fact that in these models, the parton model, Bjorken's thinking and so on, the calculation proceeded, as you say, as if they were free; therefore as if quarks of course, could become asymptotic states and be seen. That is the way the calculation took place…

No! No, no, no, no, no! That's not true! They were free in the limit of very high momentum transfers, short distances, so they were free deep inside the hadrons. They did not… they did not have to act free when the momentum transfers were small. In other words at big distances, so they were not at all free far away. So there was no problem…

[GW] So you… what I'm asking…

In fact, later on it turned out that they were extremely unfree…Yes…
At large distances, they were confined.

[GW] But at that time, you saw..?

Yeah.

[GW] You were… you saw no conflict and you were quite..?

No, I didn't see any conflict. No, I didn't see any conflict but I did not grasp the opportunity. It was the second opportunity that I didn't grasp, to say, well, if these ideas are right then that's perfectly compatible with confinement because the… the particles get less and less free as the momentum transfer gets smaller and smaller and very big distances, maybe they're completely confined. But I didn't seize hold of that. I was worried about a lot of other things at that time, and I didn't… I didn't seize hold of that.

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