Nucleon mass: trace anomaly and $\sigma$-terms
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2025-11-24 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment
High Energy Physics - Lattice
Nuclear Theory
Abstract
We give a pedagogical introduction to the origin of the mass of the nucleon. We first review the trace anomaly of the energy-momentum tensor, which generates most of the nucleon mass via the gluon fields and thus contributes even in the case of vanishing quark masses. We then discuss the contributions to the nucleon mass that do originate from the Higgs mechanism via the quark masses, reviewing the current status of nucleon -terms that encode the corresponding matrix elements.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.23902,
title = {Nucleon mass: trace anomaly and $\sigma$-terms},
author = {Martin Hoferichter and Jacobo Ruiz de Elvira},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.23902},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
12 pages, 1 figure, version to be published in the Encyclopedia of Particle Physics