Condensates in quantum chromodynamics and the cosmological constant

Casher and Susskind [Casher A, Susskind L (1974) Phys Rev 9:436-460] have noted that in the light-front description, spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is a property of hadronic wavefunctions and not of the vacuum. Here we show from several physical perspectives that, because of color confinement, quark and gluon condensates in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) are associated with the internal dynamics of hadrons. We discuss condensates using condensed matter analogues, the Anti de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, and the Bethe-Salpeter-Dyson-Schwinger approach for bound states. Our analysis is in agreement with the Casher and Susskind model and the explicit demonstration of "in-hadron" condensates by Roberts and coworkers [Maris P, Roberts CD, Tandy PC (1998) Phys Lett B 420:267-273], using the Bethe-Salpeter-Dyson- Schwinger formalism for QCD-bound states. These results imply that QCD condensates give zero contribution to the cosmological constant, because all of the gravitational effects of the in-hadron condensates are already included in the normal contribution from hadron masses.