  Non-perturbative methods of effective field theory such like Lattice QCD have
allowed to establish connection between the QCD Lagrangian and quark potential
models, a prominent outcome being the Cornell (linear plus Coulomb) potential.
In being quite successful in explaining properties of heavy flavor hadrons, be
them quarkonia or baryons, this potential has been found less spectacular in
the description of the non-strange baryons, the nucleon and the Delta. This
behavior indicates that the one-gluon exchange and the flux-tube interaction do
not fully account for the complexity of the dynamics of three light quarks.
Very recently, the Cornell potential which is of infinte range has been
upgraded by us toward an exactly solvable trigonometric potential of finite
range that interpolates between the inverse-distance potential and the infinite
wells while passing through a region of linear growth, a reason for which it
contains the inverse distance and the linear potentials as first terms in its
Taylor series decomposition. We here first make the point that the upgraded
Cornell potential can be viewed as the exact counterpart on a curved space to a
flat space 1/r potential, a circumstance that equips it by two simultaneous
symmetries, SO(4), and SO(2,1). These allow to place the trigonometric
confinement potential in the context of AdS_5/CFT correspondence and thus to
establish the link of the algebraic aspects of the latter to QCD potentiology.
Next we report that the above potential when employed in the quark-diquark
system, provides a remarkably adequate description of both nucleon and Delta
spectra and the proton mean square charge radius as well, and moreover implies
an intriguing venue toward quark deconfinement as shut-down of the curvature
considered as temperature dependent.
