Hadron masses in cavity quantum chromodynamics to order \alpha_{\rm s}^2

The non-divergent diagrams describing two-gluon exchange and annihilation between quarks and antiquarks are calculated in the Feynman gauge, based on quantum chromodynamics in a spherical cavity. Using the experimental N, , , and masses to fit the free parameters of the M.I.T. bag model, the predicted states agree very well with the observed low-lying hadrons. As expected, the two-gluon annihilation graphs lift the degeneracy of the and , while the and remain degenerate. Diagonalizing the subspace Hamiltonian yields a very good value for the mass of the meson. Received: 28 October 1999 / Revised version: 3 April 2000 / Published online: 8 June 2000