  A distinct feature of Coulomb gauge QCD is that it can be formulated in terms
of physical, transverse gluons and quarks alone. The state-counting is then
transparent, and the gauge is suited for studies of the excited spectrum.
Leaving aside exotic spectroscopy, which has been the subject of other
publications, in this note I call attention on two recent applications. One is
that the running quark mass in the mid-infrared can be probed from excited
baryons thanks to parity doubling, a consequence of insensitivity to chiral
symmetry breaking. Fast quarks are asymptotically free and behave as massless,
so hadrons containing fast quarks decouple from the condensate. Their
(power-law) rate of decoupling reflects on the rate of decreasing parity
splittings, which can be measured. The second is that, in analogy with the
Franck-Condon principle of molecular physics, the velocity distribution of the
heavy quarks inside a heavy hadron can be mapped out by the velocity
distribution of its open-flavor decay products. This is exemplified by recent
data from the Belle collaboration taken at the Upsilon(10860).
