Home▸Quantum Physics▸Quark Confinement: Color Flux Tube & String Breaking

Quark Confinement: Color Flux Tube & String Breaking

Pull a quark and antiquark apart and watch the confining gluon flux tube stretch, store energy from the Cornell potential, and snap into two new quark-antiquark pairs -- a live model of QCD color confinement and hadronization.

Quantum Physics3DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 2D version

This simulator models the Cornell potential that binds a quark and an antiquark in quantum chromodynamics — a short-range one-gluon-exchange term plus a linear confining term generated by a self-attracting gluon flux tube. Drag the separation slider (or let Auto-Pull do it) and watch the tube stretch while the stored string energy climbs a live threshold bar toward the pair-production limit. Cross it and the tube snaps: two fresh quark–antiquark pairs pop out of the vacuum and re-pair into color-neutral mesons instead of ever leaving an isolated quark behind, exactly the mechanism (hadronization) that keeps free quarks from ever being observed.

⚙ Under the hood

Pull a quark and antiquark apart and watch the confining gluon flux tube stretch under the Cornell potential, store energy, and snap into two new quark-antiquark pairs -- a live model of QCD color confinement and hadronization.

QCDquark confinementcolor chargeflux tubestring breakinghadronization

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install