Cluster reducibility of multiquark operators

It is shown that the multiquark gauge-invariant operators can, in general, be decomposed into combinations of products of ordinary hadronic operators, exhibiting their cluster reducibility. The latter property inhibits the formation of completely compact multiquark bound states. Multiquark operators still play a crucial role in the description of exotic states in regions of configuration space where the hadronic clusters are close to each other. Our proof gives a foundation for a unified viewpoint, where the multiquark-type and the molecular-type approaches play complementary roles, at the gauge-invariant nonlocal operator level.