In Quantum Chromodynamics, asymptotic freedom — the logarithmic decrease of the strong coupling constant αs(Q²) with increasing momentum transfer Q² — was discovered by Gross, Wilczek, and Politzer in 1973, earning them the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. Yet the physical mechanism — why the strong interaction becomes weaker at high energies — has remained dependent on perturbative expansions of the beta function and renormalization group equations, lacking an explanation from deeper mechanical principles. This paper presents an analytic derivation of asymptotic freedom within the Gluon Elastic Lattice Theory (GELT): the nonlinear constitutive relation K(ρ)=K₀1+ηθ of the medium produces a stiffness softening in the compression limit. When two color charges approach each other at extremely short distances, the repulsive source pushes apart the gluon lattice layer, reducing the local density and softening the stiffness to well below its background value. The evolution of the effective coupling constant with the momentum scale Q is derived as αs(Q²) = αs⁽⁰⁾ / 1 + η·ln(1+Q²/Λ₀²), where Λ₀ ≈0.68 GeV is an infrared cutoff scale uniquely determined by the correlation length of the medium. In the high-energy limit Q²≫Λ₀², this expression reduces to αs(Q²) ∝ 1/ln(Q²/Λ₀²), strictly consistent with the asymptotic freedom behavior of QCD in analytic form. Asymptotic freedom is here not a screening effect of quantum fluctuations, but the direct mechanical consequence of stiffness softening of a nonlinear elastic medium in the compression limit. With this, the G2 series of GELT — string tension (confinement), mass gap (spectral gap), glueball radius (localized configuration), asymptotic freedom (running coupling), and hadron spectrum (discrete resonances) — all emerge from one and the same nonlinear elastic constitutive relation K(ρ).
卓冰 蒋 (Fri,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: