Diquarks as inspiration and as objects

Attraction between quarks is a fundamental aspect of QCD. It is plausible that several of the most profound aspects of low-energy QCD dynamics are connected to diquark correlations, including: paucity of exotics (which is the foundation of the quark model and of traditional nuclear physics), similarity of mesons and baryons, color superconductivity at high density, hyperfine splittings, Δ = 1/2 rule, and some striking features of structure and fragmentation functions. After a brief overview of these issues, I discuss how diquarks can be studied in isolation, both phenomenologically and numerically, and present approximate mass differences for diquarks with different quantum numbers. The mass-loaded generalization of the Chew-Prautschi formula provides an essential tool.