Playing with QCD I: effective field theories

The building blocks of hadrons are quarks and gluons, although color is confined into singlet states. QCD is believed to be the fundamental theory of strong interactions. Its asymptotically free nature puts the vacuum out of reach for perturbation theory. The Lagrangian of QCD and the Feynman rules associated were built by using the Gauge Principle, starting from the quark matter fields and obtaining gluons as connections. A simpler, and sometimes necessary or complementary, approach is provided by effective field theories or effective models, especially when one has to deal with the nonperturbative sector of the theory. (author)