The Strong Coupling Constant αₛ: Standard QCD, Running, and a Vacuum-Hydrodynamic Hypothesis for Its Origin and Relation to G
The strong coupling constant αₛ is a fundamental parameter of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), governing the strength of interactions between quarks and gluons and the transition between asymptotic freedom and confinement.
In standard QCD, αₛ is defined as the renormalized SU(3) gauge coupling, specified at a reference scale and evolved through the renormalization group.
The current Particle Data Group benchmark is αₛ(mZ) = 0.1180 ± 0.0009, where mZ represents the Z-boson mass scale.
This value is an experimentally calibrated normalization of a running coupling rather than a number derived from more fundamental constants within orthodox QCD.
The article investigates a non-standard vacuum-based framework in which the physical vacuum is modeled as a structured medium and elementary particles are regarded as vortex-like configurations.
Its central claim is that the effective drag coefficient CD is neither obtained from QCD nor fitted using αₛ.
Instead, CD is first derived from a hydrodynamic relation describing vacuum resistance.
Using ρvac = 9.51×10⁻²⁷ kg·m⁻³ and the pressure-normalized gravitational vacuum-resistance scale PG = 6.67430×10⁻¹¹ N·m⁻², the model obtains CD = 2PG/(ρvac c²) = 0.15618 ≈ 0.156.
Only after deriving this hydrodynamic coefficient is it compared with the color-weighted QCD benchmark coupling.
The correspondence CD ≈ (4/3)αₛ(mZ) gives αₛ(model)(mZ) ≈ (3/4)CD = 0.11713, which is close to the PDG benchmark.
Conversely, taking αₛ(mZ) = 0.1180 leads to ρvac = 9.44×10⁻²⁷ kg·m⁻³, less than one percent away from the assumed vacuum-density scale.
These results do not amount to a derivation within standard QCD.
Rather, they establish a testable hypothesis in which confinement and gravitation are interpreted as different regimes of a shared structured-vacuum dynamics.
The main significance of the approach is its reinterpretation of the strong-coupling benchmark as a color-channel projection of an independently derived vacuum-resistance coefficient; however, a complete theory would still need a dimensional derivation of the G-to-pressure mapping, a derivation of QCD running, and quantitative comparison with lattice-QCD observables.
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