Hadronization

Hadronization is the process by which quarks and gluons become confined into color-neutral hadrons as a high-energy system evolves. It occurs when the strong interaction becomes nonperturbative at energy scales near the quantum chromodynamics confinement scale.

Color confinement: The phenomenon that prevents isolated quarks and gluons from appearing as free particles. As energy falls, confinement binds colored partons into color-neutral hadrons.
Quark: A fundamental fermion that carries color charge and combines with other quarks to form hadrons. Quarks are the constituent partons that become bound during hadronization.
Jet (particle physics): A collimated spray of particles produced when a high-energy quark or gluon evolves and hadronizes. Jets preserve information about the initiating parton while displaying its hadronized products.
Perturbative quantum chromodynamics: The use of perturbation theory to calculate strong-interaction processes at sufficiently high energy or short distance. Perturbative calculations describe the preceding parton evolution, but not the binding into hadrons.
Hadronization corrections: Adjustments that account for differences between parton-level predictions and hadron-level measurements. Their size limits how precisely perturbative predictions can be compared with collider data.
Quantum chromodynamics: The quantum field theory describing quarks, gluons, and the strong interaction. Its strong coupling at low energies makes hadronization impossible to calculate with ordinary perturbation theory.
Gluon: The massless gauge boson of the strong interaction, carrying color charge and mediating interactions between quarks. Gluons participate in parton showers and can themselves produce hadrons.
Particle jet algorithms: Algorithms that group measured particles into jets to approximate their common energetic origin. They reconstruct hadronic final states for comparison with parton-level predictions.
Quark–gluon plasma: A high-temperature state of matter in which quarks and gluons are not confined within individual hadrons. Hadronization occurs as an expanding plasma cools and its partons become confined.
Heavy-quark fragmentation: The conversion of a heavy quark, such as charm or bottom, into hadrons containing that quark. Heavy-quark data test how mass changes fragmentation and the transition to hadrons.

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