Confinement

Type: Concept

As of November 2026, Confinement has been mentioned in one podcast episode on Simons Foundation (Jan 2026). Central theme in understanding the behavior of gauge theories and instantons.

In quantum chromodynamics (QCD), color confinement or infrared slavery, is the phenomenon that color-charged particles cannot be isolated, and therefore cannot be directly observed in normal conditions below the Hagedorn temperature of approximately 2 terakelvin. Quarks and gluons must clump together to form hadrons. The two main types of hadron are the mesons and the baryons. In addition, colorless glueballs formed only of gluons are also consistent with confinement, though difficult to identif