The spectrum of radially excited hadrons provides much information about the confinement forces in QCD. The confinement is realized most naturally in terms of the QCD string whose quantization gives rise to the radially excited modes. We propose an alternative framework for the description of the excited spectrum. Namely we put forward some effective field models in which the hadrons acquire masses due to interaction with a scalar field modeling the non-perturbative gluon vacuum. The effective potential for this field is periodic with an infinite number of non-equivalent vacua. The radially excited hadrons emerge as elementary excitations over different vacua. We construct explicit examples for such effective theories in the meson sector. An interesting byproduct of the considered models is the existence of a classical field configuration in each vacuum. Depending on the model, it can represent a domain wall, Nielsen–Olesen vortex or ’t Hooft–Polyakov monopole. In the pure scalar sector, it is shown that the first quantum correction leads to splitting of the radially excited modes into two nearly degenerate states. Such a phenomenon has some phenomenological support. The presented approach may also be viewed as an alternative framework to the bottom-up AdS/QCD models where the radial excitations appear on the classical level as well.
