Paper IV of the Relational Geometric Mechanics series. Derives quark confinement from the SU(3) vector phase component of the RGM wave signature. The vector nature of the color phase introduces a cross-product self-interaction term that vanishes on-axis between color charges and grows off-axis. The variational principle forces the color field into a cylindrical flux tube, producing a linear confinement potential V = σr. Color neutrality as a foam stability condition produces mesons and baryons as the only stable hadron configurations. String breaking follows from the same variational principle. The R³ vector representation used here is a physically correct surrogate for the full SU(3) treatment, which is a formalization target of the series.
Timothy Gleason (Sun,) studied this question.