Quark Confinement, New Cosmic Expansion and General Yang-Mills Symmetry

We discuss a unified model of quark confinement and new cosmic expansion with linear potentials based on a general $(SU_3)_{color} \times (U_1)_{baryon}$ symmetry. The phase functions in the usual gauge transformations are generalized to new `action integrals'. The general Yang-Mills transformations have group properties and reduce to usual gauge transformations in special cases. Both quarks and `gauge bosons' are permanently confined by linear potentials. In this unified model of particle-cosmology, physics in the largest cosmos and that in the smallest quark system appear to both be dictated by the general Yang-Mills symmetry and characterized by a universal length. The basic force between two baryons is independent of distance. However, the cosmic repulsive force exerted on a baryonic supernova by a uniform sphere of galaxies is proportional to the distance from the center of the sphere. The new general Yang-Mills field may give a field-theoretic explanation of the accelerated cosmic expansion. The prediction could be tested experimentally by measuring the frequency shifts of supernovae at different distances.