On the asymptotic transition to complexity in quantum chromodynamics

Abstract

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is a renormalizable gauge theory that successfully describes the fundamental interaction of quarks and gluons. The rich dynamical content of QCD is manifest, for example, in the spectroscopy of complex hadrons or the emergence of quark–gluon plasma. There is a fair amount of uncertainty regarding the behavior of perturbative QCD in the infrared and far ultraviolet regions. Our work explores these two domains of QCD using non-linear dynamics and complexity theory. We find that local bifurcations of the renormalization flow destabilize asymptotic freedom and induce a steady transition to chaos in the far ultraviolet limit. We also conjecture that, in the infrared region, dissipative non-linearity of the renormalization flow supplies a natural mechanism for confinement.