Asymptotic freedom

In physics, asymptotic freedom is a property of some gauge theories that causes bonds between particles to become weaker as energy increases and distance decreases.

Asymptotic freedom is a feature of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the quantum field theory of the nuclear interaction between quarks and gluons, the fundamental constituents of nuclear matter. Quarks interact weakly at high energies, allowing perturbative calculations by DGLAP of cross sections in deep inelastic processes of particle physics; and strongly at low energies, preventing the unbinding of baryons (like protons or neutrons with three quarks) or mesons (like pions with two quarks), the composite particles of nuclear matter.

Asymptotic freedom was rediscovered and described in 1973 by Frank Wilczek and David Gross, and independently by David Politzer in the same year. All three shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 2004.

Asymptotic freedom was described and published in 1973 by David Gross and Frank Wilczek, and also by David Politzer. Although these authors were the first to understand the physical relevance to the strong interactions, in 1965 V.S. Vanyashin and M.V. Terent'ev discovered asymptotic freedom in QED with charged vector field and in 1969 Iosif Khriplovich in the SU(2) gauge theory.Gerardus 't Hooft in 1972 also noted the effect but did not publish it. For their discovery, Gross, Wilczek and Politzer were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004.

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