Relativistic Bound States

Abstract

The standard resul ts of the quark model rely on nonrelativistic descriptions of the wavefunctions of the quarks in the hadron. However, simple uncertainty principle considerations show that the momenta of the quarks are comparable to their (constituent) masses, so that relativistic dynamics must be used in the description of the hadronic structure. In this paper I describe a number of new and old results which illustrate relativistic effects on the quark structure of hardons, and which employ the method of light cone quantisation to handle relativity.