Mesonic eightfold way from dynamics and confinement in strongly coupled lattice quantum chromodynamics

We show the existence of all the 36 eightfold way mesons and determine their masses and dispersion curves exactly, from dynamical first principles such as directly from the quark-fluon dynamics. We also give a proof of confinement below the two-meson energy threshold. For this purpose, we consider an imaginary time functional integral representation of a 3+1 dimensional lattice QCD model with Wilson action, SU(3)f global and SU(3)c local symmetries. We work in the strong coupling regime, such that the hopping parameter κ>0 is small and much larger than the plaquette coupling β>1/g02⩾0 (β⪡κ⪡1). In the quantum mechanical physical Hilbert space H, a Feynman-Kac type representation for the two-meson correlation and its spectral representation are used to establish an exact rigorous connection between the complex momentum singularities of the two-meson truncated correlation and the energy-momentum spectrum of the model. The total spin operator J and its z-component Jz are defined by using π∕2 rotations about t...