The Condensate Account: Vacuum Energy Stored in the Gluon and Quark Condensates and the Bag Constant
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Below the QCD transition the vacuum is not empty but condensed, and the energy stored in that structure is estimated by quantities extracted from hadron spectroscopy. This paper converts four standard phenomenological values, the gluon condensate of 0.012 GeV^4, the quark condensate scale of 0.24 GeV, the MIT bag constant with a fourth root of 0.145 GeV, and a chiral scale of 0.30 GeV, into energy densities and compares each with the observed vacuum density of 2.52 x 10^-47 GeV^4. The smallest entry still exceeds the observed density by 43.2 orders of magnitude and the largest by 44.7. Because these contributions arise late in cosmic history, no early-universe arrangement can pre-empt them. The values are computations from stated phenomenological inputs, not measurements.
Author: Aldred, William Alexander
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225818913
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