Tracing Vacuum Hadronization with Conserved Currents

Abstract

We show that color triality constrains the nonperturbative states that screen a Wilson-line endpoint, allowing the joint flows of net electric charge, baryon number, and strangeness to probe QCD vacuum hadronization. Whether evaluated from resolved hadrons in a jet initiated by a quark of flavor $f$ or from the corresponding charge correlators, these flows satisfy the Gell-Mann--Nishijima relation $⟨Q_{\mathrm{flow}}{⟩}_f\simeq I_{3,f}+\frac{1}{2}\left(⟨S_{\mathrm{flow}}{⟩}_f+⟨B_{\mathrm{flow}}{⟩}_f\right)$, where $I_{3,f}$ is the third component of the initiating-quark isospin. The net jet baryon number, $⟨B_{\mathrm{flow}}{⟩}_f\simeq \frac{r_{qq}}{1+r_{qq}}$, directly probes the relative probability of a diquark--antidiquark vacuum excitation, with $r_{qq}$ the diquark-to-quark production ratio. Thus, for $r_{qq}\ll 1$, the baryon number carried by the jet is substantially suppressed relative to the initiating-quark value $B_f=1/3$. Likewise, the strange-to-light pair-production ratio, defined by $u\bar{u}:d\bar{d}:s\bar{s}=1:1:r_s$, is encoded in the measured jet strangeness $⟨S_{\mathrm{flow}}{⟩}_f\simeq S_f+\frac{3r_s}{2+r_s}\left(\frac{1}{3}-⟨B_{\mathrm{flow}}{⟩}_f\right)$, predicting a nonzero mean net strangeness even in $u$- and $d$-initiated jets. The conserved-current moments appearing in these relations are independent of the renormalization scale. Their simultaneous measurement therefore provides a direct, flavor-resolved probe of vacuum pair production and quantum-number transport during hadronization.

Comments: 25 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, including 4 pages of appendices