QCD Vacuum Energy and Its Implication for Quark Nugget Stability
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2026-05-28 v2 High Energy Physics - Lattice
Nuclear Theory
Abstract
In this work, we employ both theoretical and data-driven methods to derive the QCD vacuum energy, utilizing the GMOR relation, the low-energy theorem, and the equation of state from Lattice QCD. The QCD vacuum energy is determined to be between around and . With the assumptions of complete deconfinement, vanishing gluon condensate, full chiral-symmetry restoration, and the validity of perturbative QCD at baryon chemical potentials of order of the proton mass, a very specific kind of quark nugget is found to be less stable than ordinary nuclei.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.20241,
title = {QCD Vacuum Energy and Its Implication for Quark Nugget Stability},
author = {Yang Bai and Ting-Kuo Chen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.20241},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
21 pages, 6 figures, matches the published version