Higgs picture of the QCD-vacuum

The functional integral for QCD is reformulated by introducing explicitly an integration over the fluctuations of composite quark-antiquark bound states. Chiral symmetry breaking by the color singlet scalar field induces masses for the fermions. Our formulation with scalar fluctuations may be useful for lattice gauge theories by modifying the spectrum of the Dirac operator in the vacuum and permitting a simple connection to chiral perturbation theory. We propose that a ``condensate'' of quark-antiquark bound states in the color octet channel generates masses of the gluons by the Higgs mechanism. A simple effective action for quarks, gluons and (composite) scalars yields a surprisingly good description of the charges, masses and interactions of all low mass physical excitations - baryons, pseudoscalars and vector mesons. Dressed quarks appear as baryons and dressed gluons as vector mesons.