Many-Body Systems in the Strong Interaction

Abstract

In the second part of this book we have described how many-body systems may be built out of quarks. The strong interaction is responsible for the binding of these systems – hadrons and nuclei –, which are complex quantum-mechanical systems. This complexity manifests itself in the systems’ many, apparently mutually incompatible facets. Some aspects of these systems may be understood in a single-particle picture, while some indicate the existence of large sub-structures and others are explained as collective effects of the entire system and finally some are chaotic and only amenable to a statistical description. Each of these concepts, however, only describes a single aspect of these systems.