Evolution equations for the effective four-quark interactions in QCD

A nonperturbative renormalization group equation describes how the momentum dependent four-quark vertex depends on an infrared cutoff. We find a quasilocal one-particle irreducible piece generated by (anomaly-free) multi-gluon exchange. It becomes important at a cutoff scale where scalar and pseudoscalar meson-bound states are expected to play a role. This interaction remains subleading as compared to the effective one-gluon exchange contribution. The local instanton induced four-quark interaction becomes dominant at a scale around 800 MeV. In absence of a gluon mass the strong dependence of the one-gluon exchange on the transferred momentum indicates that the pointlike interactions of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model cannot give a very accurate description of QCD. A pointlike effective four-quark interaction becomes more realistic in case of spontaneous color symmetry breaking. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.