On Condensates in Strongly Coupled Gauge Theories

Understand

We present a new perspective on the nature of quark and gluon condensates in quantum chromodynamics.

• We suggest that the spatial support of QCD condensates is restricted to the interiors of hadrons, since these condensates arise due to the interactions of confined quarks and gluons.
• An analogy is drawn with order parameters like the Cooper pair condensate and spontaneous magnetization experimentally measured in finite samples in condensed matter physics.
• Our picture explains the results of recent studies which find no significant signal for the vacuum gluon condensate.