  Atomic physics and hadronic physics are both governed by the Yang Mills gauge
theory Lagrangian; in fact, Abelian quantum electrodynamics can be regarded as
the zero-color limit of quantum chromodynamics. I review a number of areas
where the techniques of atomic physics can provide important insight into
hadronic eigenstates in QCD. For example, the Dirac-Coulomb equation, which
predicts the spectroscopy and structure of hydrogenic atoms, has an analog in
hadron physics in the form of frame-independent light-front relativistic
equations of motion consistent with light-front holography which give a
remarkable first approximation to the spectroscopy, dynamics, and structure of
light hadrons. The production of antihydrogen in flight can provide important
insight into the dynamics of hadron production in QCD at the amplitude level.
The renormalization scale for the running coupling is unambiguously set in QED;
an analogous procedure sets the renormalization scales in QCD, leading to
scheme-independent scale-fixed predictions. Conversely, many techniques which
have been developed for hadron physics, such as scaling laws, evolution
equations, the quark-interchange process and light-front quantization have
important applicants for atomic physics and photon science, especially in the
relativistic domain.
