Dynamical eightfold way mesons in strongly coupled lattice QCD.

We consider a 3 + 1 lattice QCD model with three quark ?avors, local SU(3)c gauge symmetry, global SU(3)f isospin or ?avor symmetry, in an imaginary-time formulation and with strong coupling (a small hopping parameter ? > 0 and a plaquette coupling ? > 0, 0 < ? ? ? ? 1). Associated with the model there is an underlying physical quantum mechanical Hilbert space H which, via a Feynman-Kac formula, enables us to introduce spectral representations for correlations and obtain the low-lying energy-momentum spectrum exactly. Using the decoupling of hyperplane method and concentrating on the subspace He ? H of vectors with an even number of quarks, we obtain the one-particle spectrum showing the existence of 36 meson states from dynamical ?rst principles, i.e. directly from the quark-gluon dynamics. Besides the SU(3)f quantum numbers (total hypercharge, quadratic Casimir C2, total isospin and its 3rd component), the basic excitations also carry spin labels. The total spin operator J and its z-component Jz are de?ned using ?=2 rotations about the spatial coordinate axes and agree with the in?nitesimal generators of the continuum for improper zero-momentum meson states. The eightfold way meson particles are given by linear combinations of these 36 states and can be grouped into three SU(3)f nonets associated with the vector mesons (J = 1; Jz = 0;?1) and one nonet associated with the pseudo-scalar mesons (J = 0). Each nonet admits a further decomposition into a SU(3)f singlet (C2 = 0) and octet (C2 = 3). The particles are detected by isolated dispersion curves w(~p) in the energy-momentum spectrum. They are all of the form, for ? = 0, w(~p) = ?2 ln ? ? 3?2=2 + (1=4)?2 P3 j=1 2(1 ? cos pj) + ?4r(?; ~p), with jr(?; ~p)j ? const. For the pseudo-scalar mesons r(?; ~p) is jointly analytic in ? and pj , for j?j and jIm pj j small. The meson masses are given by m(?) = ?2 ln ? ? 3?2=2 + ?4r(?), with r(0) 6= 0 and r(?) real analytic; they are also analytic in ?. For a ?xed nonet, the mass of the vector mesons are independent of Jz and are all equal within each octet. All singlet masses are also equal for the vector mesons. For ? = 0, up to and including O(?4), for each nonet, the masses of the octet and the singlet are found to be equal. All members of each octet have identical dispersions. Other dispersion curves may di?er. Indeed, there is a pseudo-scalar, vector meson mass splitting (between J = 0 and J = 1) given by 2?4+O(?6); at ? = 0, analytic in ? and the splitting persists for ? << ?. Using a correlation subtraction method, we show the 36 meson states give the only spectrum in He up to near the two-meson threshold of ? ?4 ln ?. Combining our present result with a similar one for baryons (of asymptotic mass ?3 ln ?) shows that the model does exhibit con?nement up to near the two-meson threshold