Quark structure of hadrons and nuclei

Abstract

In this review we look into the recent understanding of mesons, baryons and nuclei as few quark bound states within the framework of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In particular, we have reviewed our understanding of the nature of confining interaction, the spin-dependence of colour forces and the role of non-perturbative effects in the study of quark forces in the potential model approach. We also give a comparative study of results obtained by several potential models with reference to the experimental data. We find that although the Lorentz nature of confinement and the nature of spin-dependent colour forces have been better understood now, only a partial understanding of these problems are obtained so far. Our study reveals that properties of baryons could be explained by the same potential models which successfully describe the mesons. The hadrons and nuclei require chiral symmetry and non-perturbative methods for their description. We also discuss the relation between constitutent, current and dynamical quark masses. We conclude that QCD motivated approaches have been much successful in explaining many results on hadronic and nuclear data.