In
particle physics,
hadronization (or
hadronisation) is the process of the formation of
hadrons out of
quarks and
gluons. This occurs after high-energy collisions in a particle
collider in which free quarks or gluons are created. Due to
colour confinement, these cannot exist individually. In the Standard Model they combine with quarks and antiquarks spontaneously created from the
vacuum to form hadrons. The QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) of the hadronization process are not yet fully understood, but are modeled and parameterized in a number of phenomenological studies, including the
Lund string model and in various long-range
QCD approximation schemes.