On the energy budget of quarks and hadrons, their vastly underrated “strong charge,” and the profound impact of Coulomb repulsion on their ground states

Abstract

We meta-analyze particle data and properties for those hadrons with measured rest-masses. The results of our study are as follows: (1) the strong-force suppression of the repulsive Coulomb forces between quarks is sufficient to explain the differences between mass deficits in nucleons and pions (and only them), the ground states with the longest known mean lifetimes; (2) unlike mass deficits, the excitations in rest-masses of all particle groups are effectively quantized, but the rules are different in baryons and mesons; (3) the strong field is aware of the extra factor of \(\vartheta_{\rm e}=2\) in the charges \(Q\) of the positively-charged quarks; (4) mass deficits combine contributions proportional to the mass of each valence quark; (5) the scaling factor of these contributions is the same for each quark in each group of particles, provided that the factor \(\vartheta_{\rm e}=2\) is taken into account; (6) besides hypercharge \(Y,\) the much lesser-known "strong charge" \(Q^{\prime}=Y-Q\) is very useful in SU(3) in describing properties of particles located along the right-leaning sides and diagonals of the weight diagrams; (7) strong decays in which \(Q^{\prime}\) is conserved are differentiated from weak decays, even for the same particle; (8) the energy diagrams of (anti)quark transitions indicate the origin of CP violation.