Series expansion of the quark determinant in the number of quark–antiquark pairs Original Research Article

We propose a formulation of the QCD partition function which leads to a series expansion for the quark determinant in any given baryonic sector. The rth term gives the gauge-invariant contribution of the valence quarks plus r quark–antiquark pairs. This expansion can be used to investigate any baryonic sector, starting from the nucleon up to high baryonic densities.