Glueballs are predicted in various theoretical approaches of QCD (most notably lattice QCD), but their experimental verification is still missing. In the low-energy sector some promising candidate for the scalar glueball exist, and some (less clear) candidates for the tensor and pseudoscalar glueballs were also proposed. Yet, for heavier gluonic states there is much work to be done both from the experimental and theoretical points of view. In these proceedings, we briefly review the current status of research of glueballs and discuss future developments.
We study whether the pseudoscalar glueball mass in full QCD can differ from the prediction of quenched lattice calculations. Using properties of the correlator of the vacuum topological susceptibility we derive an expression for the upper bound on the QCD glueball mass. We show that the QCD pseudoscalar glueball is lighter than the pure Yang-Mills theory glueball studied in quenched lattice calculations. The mass difference between those two states is of order of $1/N_c$. The value calculated for the $0^{-+}$ QCD glueball mass can not be reconciled with any physical state observed so far in th…
Theoretical ideas related to the existence of glueballs in QCD are reviewed. These include non-perturbative phenomena such as confinement, instantons, vacuum condensates and renormalons. We also discuss glueball dominance of the trace of the stress-tensor, the mass content of the nucleon and a theorem on the lightest glueball state.
Contributions of fermions to the mass of the scalar glueball $0^{++}$ are calculated at two-loop level in the framework of QCD sum rules. It obviously changes the coefficients in the operator product expansion (OPE) and shifts the mass of glueball.
The mass of the lowest scalar glueball is discussed by using QCD sum rules. We find that the glueball mass is sensitive to the choice of moments and slightly depends on the radiative corrections. With the help of suitable moments and stability criteria, we get the scalar glueball mass: $1710\pm110$ MeV without radiative corrections and $1580\pm150$ MeV with radiative corrections.
We outline a comprehensive study of spin-0 glueball properties which, in particular, keeps track of the topological gluon structure. Specifically, we implement (semi-hard) topological instanton physics as well as topological charge screening in the QCD vacuum into the operator product expansion (OPE) of the glueball correlators. A realistic instanton size distribution and the (gauge-invariant) renormalization of the instanton contributions are also implemented. Predictions for 0^{++} and 0^{-+} glueball properties are presented.
We investigate the spectra of light scalar and vector glueballs in a holografic description of QCD with a dilaton background bulk field. In particular, we study how the glueball masses depend on the conditions on the dilaton background and on the geometry of the bulk.
We study the scalar, vector and tensor two-gluon and trigluon glueball spectra in the framework of 5-dimension dynamical holographic QCD model, where the metric structure is deformed self-consistently by the dilaton field. For comparison, the glueball spectra are also calculated in the hard-wall and soft-wall holographic QCD models. In order to distinguish glueballs with even and odd parities, we introduce the positive and negative coupling between the dilaton field and glueballs, and for higher spin glueballs, we introduce a deformed 5-dimension mass. With this set-up, there is only one free …
We use Ward identities of broken scale invariance to infer the amount of scalar glueball--$\bar{q}q$ meson mixing from the ratio of quark and gluon condensates in the QCD vacuum. Assuming dominance by a single scalar state, as suggested by a phase-shift analysis, we find a mixing angle $γ\sim 36^{\circ}$, corresponding to near-maximal mixing of the glueball and $\bar{s}s$ components.
This is a contribution to the review "50 Years of Quantum Chromdynamics" edited by F. Gross and E. Klempt [arXiv:2212.11107], to be published in EPJC. The contribution remembers the early searches and explains how to find a glueball, based on its properties. The results of a coupled-channel analysis are presented that provides evidence for the scalar glueball and first hints for the tensor glueball. Data on radiative decays of $ψ(2S)$ and $Υ(1S)$ show scalar intensity that is likely due to glueball production.
The $0^{++}$ glueball mass is analyzed in the QCD sum rules. We show that in order to determine the $0^{++}$ glueball mass by using the QCD sum rules method, it is necessary to clarify the following three ingredients: (1) to choose the appropriate moment with acceptable parameters which satisfy all of the criteria; (2) to take account into the radiative corrections; (3) to estimate an additional contribution to the glueball mass from the lowest lying ${\bar q}q$ resonance. We conclude that it is the key point to choose suitable moments to determine the $0^{++}$ glueball mass, the radiative cor…
The scalar glueball is investigated in a soft-wall model of AdS/QCD. Constraints of the mass of the scalar glueball are given through an analysis of a relation between the bulk mass and the anomalous dimension. The mass of the ground scalar glueball is located at $0.96^{+0.04}_{-0.07} \rm{GeV}<m_G<1.36^{+0.05}_{-0.10}\rm{GeV}$. In terms of a background dilaton field $Φ(z)=cz^2$, the two-point correlation function for the scalar gluon operator is obtained. The two-point correlation function at $Δ=4$ gives a different behavior compared with the one in QCD.
The lattice QCD studies indicate that the critical temperature $T_c \simeq 260-280$ MeV of the deconfinement phase transition in quenched QCD is considerably smaller than the lowest-lying glueball mass $m_{\rm G} \simeq 1500-1700$ MeV, i.e., $ T_c \ll m_{\rm G}$. As a consequence of this large difference, the thermal excitation of the glueball in the confinement phase is strongly suppressed by the statistical factor as $e^{-m_{\rm G}/T_c} \simeq 0.00207$ even near $T \simeq T_c$. We consider its physical implication, and argue the abnormal feature of the deconfinement phase transition in quenc…
Using a nonperturbative method based on asymptotic behaviour of Wilson loops we calculate masses of glueballs and corresponding Regge-trajectories. The method contains no fitting parameters and the mass scale is fixed by the meson Regge slope. Theoretical predictions for lowest glueball states are in a perfect agreement with lattice results. The leading glueball trajectory and its relation to the Pomeron is discussed in details. Important role of mixing between glueball and q\bar q trajectories is emphasized.
We discuss how to extract the spectroscopy of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in the pure gauge sector from the Hamiltonian lattice field theory approach. The recently developed truncated eigenvalue equation method is applied to the estimation of the scalar glueball $0^{++}$ and $0^{--}$ masses in the (2+1)-dimensional case. These masses reach the constant values in a scaling region as required by the renormalizability.
The Abelian decomposition of QCD which decomposes the gluons to the color neutral binding gluons (the neurons) and the colored valence gluons (the chromons) gauge independently naturally generalizes the quark model to the quark and chromon model which could play the central role in hadron spectroscopy. We discuss the color reflection symmetry, the fundamental symmetry of the quark and chromon model, and explain how it describes the glueballs and the glueball-quarkonium mixing in QCD. We present the numerical analysis of glueball-quarkonium mixing in $0^{++}$, $2^{++}$, and $0^{-+}$ sectors bel…
The lowest dimension three-gluon currents that couple to the exotic $0^{\pm-}$ glueballs have been constructed using the helicity formalism. Based on the constructed currents, we obtain new QCD SRs that have been used to extract the masses and the decay constants of the scalar exotic $0^{\pm-}$ glueballs. We estimate the masses for the scalar state and for the pseudoscalar state to be ${m_+=9.8^{+1.3}_{-1.4}}$ GeV and $m_-=6.8^{+1.1}_{-1.2}$ GeV.
A phenomenological analysis of the scalar glueball and scalar meson spectra is carried out by using the AdS/QCD framework in the bottom-up approach. The resulting spectra are in good agreement for glueballs with lattice QCD results and for mesons with PDG data. We make use of the relation between the mode functions in AdS/QCD and the wave functions in Light-Front $QCD$ to discuss the mixing of glueballs and mesons. The results of our investigation point out that above 2 GeV scalar particles will appear in almost degenerate pairs of unmixed glueball and mesons states leading to an interesting p…
We investigate AdS/QCD duality for the two-point correlation function of the lowest dimension scalar glueball operator, in the case of the IR soft wall model. We point out the role of the boundary conditions for the bulk-to-boundary propagator in determining the gluon condensates. We show that a low energy QCD theorem can be obtained within the AdS approach, together with a gluon condensate close to the commonly accepted value and robust against perturbation of the background dilaton field.
We study the spectra of two-gluon glueballs and three-gluon oddballs and corresponding equation of state in $5$-dimensional deformed holographic QCD models in the graviton-dilaton system, where the metric, the dilaton field and dilaton potential are self-consistently solved from each other through the Einstein field equations and the equation of motion of the dilaton field. We compare the models by inputting the dilaton field, inputting the deformed metric and inputting the dilaton potential, and find that with only 2 parameters, the $5$-dimensional holographic QCD model predictions on gluebal…
The Abelian decomposition of QCD which decomposes the gluons to the color neutral binding gluons and the colored valence gluons shows that QCD can be viewed as the restricted QCD (RCD) made of the binding gluons which has the valence gluons as colored source, and simplifies the QCD dynamics greatly. In particular, it tells that the gauge covariant valence gluons can be treated as the constituents of hadrons, and generalizes the quark model to the quark and valence gluon model. So it provides a comprehensive picture of glueballs and their mixing with quarkoniums, and predicts new hybrid hadrons…
We review standard holographic derivations of the scalar glueball spectra and emphasize computational assumptions which rely strongly on the original AdS/CFT correspondence, and those which are more arbitrary. In the soft-wall model, we show explicitly that the dual of the spectral mass constraint in the Kallen-Lehmann representation of the 2-point scalar gluonic correlator is an eigenvalue constraint on the motion equation of the bulk field corresponding this correlator.
An effective chiral lagrangian of order $p^2$, describing the interaction of light pseudoscalar (PS) mesons with $η'$-meson and PS-glueball, has been determined taking into consideration the renorm-group requirements imposed by QCD renormalization. It is shown that the interpolating fields for the lowest singlet quarkic and gluonic states, $η^0$ and $η^G$, may be involved into the effective theory to be renorm-invariant objects not mixing due to QCD renormalization. It is established that the potential describing the ``mass'' term of the lagrangian does not depend on $η^0$. The dependence on $…
Glueballs, an old and firm prediction of various QCD approaches (lattice QCD, bag models, AdS/QCD, effective models, etc.), have not yet been experimentally confirmed. While for glueballs below $2.6$ GeV some candidates exist, the situation for heavy glueballs (above $2.6$ GeV) is cloudy. Here, after a brief review of scalar, tensor, and pseudoscalar glueballs, we present predictions for the decays of a putative pseudotensor glueball with a lattice predicted mass of $3.04$ GeV and a putative vector glueball with a lattice predicted mass of $3.81$ GeV. Moreover, we discuss in general the width …
Nonperturbative Wilson coefficients of the operator product expansion (OPE) for the spin-0 glueball correlators are derived and analyzed. A systematic treatment of the direct instanton contributions is given, based on realistic instanton size distributions and renormalization at the operator scale. In the pseudoscalar channel, topological charge screening is identified as an additional source of (semi-) hard nonperturbative physics. The screening contributions are shown to be vital for consistency with the anomalous axial Ward identity, and previously encountered pathologies (positivity violat…
In this contribution we present a a phenomenological analysis of the scalar glueball and scalar meson spectra within AdS/QCD models in the bottom-up approach. In particular, we consider a Light-Front QCD framework which allows to relate the AdS/QCD mode functions to the hadronic wave-functions. Such a procedure is here adopted to analyse the mixing between scalar mesons and glueballs.
The complete low-lying positive charge conjugation glueball spectrum is obtained from QCD. The formalism relies on the construction of an efficient quasiparticle gluon basis for Hamiltonian QCD in Coulomb gauge. The resulting rapidly convergent Fock space expansion is exploited to derive quenched low-lying glueball masses with no free parameters which are in remarkable agreement with lattice gauge theory.
We report a glueball Regge trajectory emerging from diagonalizing a confining Coulomb gauge Hamiltonian for constituent gluons. Using a BCS vacuum ansatz and gap equation, the dressed gluons acquire a mass, of order 800 $MeV$, providing the quasiparticle degrees of freedom for a TDA glueball formulation. The TDA eigenstates for two constituent gluons have orbital, $L$, excitations with a characteristic energy of 400 $MeV$ revealing a clear Regge trajectory for $\vec{J} = \vec{L} + \vec{S}$, where $S$ is the total (sum) gluon spin. Significantly, the $S = 2$ glueball spectrum coincides with the…
We study scalar glueballs and scalar mesons at $T \neq 0$ in the soft wall holographic QCD model. We find that, using the Anti-de Sitter-Black Hole metric for all values of the temperature, the masses of the hadronic states decrease and the widths become broader when T increases, and there are temperatures for which the states disappear from the scalar glueball and scalar meson spectral functions. However, the values of the temperatures in correspondence of which such phenomena occur are low, of the order of 40-60 MeV. A consistent holographic description of in-medium effects on hadron propert…
Odd-spin glueballs in the dynamical AdS/QCD model are scrutinized, in the paradigm of the configurational entropy (CE). Configurational-entropic Regge trajectories, that relate the CE underlying odd-spin glueballs to their mass spectra and spin, are then engendered. They predict the mass spectra of odd-spin glueballs, besides pointing towards the configurational stability of odd-spin glueball resonances. The exponential modified dilaton with logarithmic anomalous dimensions comprises the most suitable choice to derive the mass spectra of odd-spin glueballs, compatible to lattice QCD. It is the…
We obtain accurate result for the lightest glueball mass of QCD in 3 dimensions from lattice Hamiltonian field theory. Using the dimensional reduction argument, a good approximation for confining theories, we suggest that the $0^{++}$ glueball mass in 3+1 dimensional QCD be about $1.71$ GeV.
We propose a possible explanation of the kinematical dependence of the central production of the scalar glueball candidate observed recently by the WA91 and WA102 Collaborations, and discussed by Close and Kirk, in the context of the broken scale invariance of QCD. The dependences of glueball production on the transverse momenta and azimuthal angles of the final-state protons may be related to the structure of the trace anomaly in QCD.
From the large-N_c QCD point of view, baryonia, tetra-quark states, hybrids, and glueballs are studied. The existence of these states is argued for. They are constructed from baryons. In N_f=1 large N_c QCD, a baryonium is always identical to a glueball with N_c valence gluons. The ground state 0^{-+} glueball has a mass about 2450 MeV. f_0(1710) is identified as the lowest 0^{++} glueball. The lowest four-quark nonet should be f_0(1370), a_0(1450), K^*_0(1430) and f_0(1500). Combining with the heavy quark effective theory, spectra of heavy baryonia and heavy tetra-quark states are predicted. …
We discuss our results on scalar glueball decay in the top-down holographic Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model for low-energy QCD and compare with available experimental data, which appear to disfavor the glueball candidate $f_0(1500)$ but seem to be perfectly consistent with interpreting $f_0(1710)$ as a nearly unmixed glueball. The holographic model moreover makes definite predictions for future experiments.
We present the new developments in the physics of XYZ mesons and glueballs and discuss the connection between properties of the $XYZ$ mesons and glueballs, and the structure of the QCD vacuum. It is shown that the mixing between quark and gluon degree of freedoms induced by the nontrivial topological structure of the QCD vacuum might affect strongly the properties of the exotic hadrons. A new interpretation of the $XYZ$ mesons as the mixing between radial excitations of light quark-antiquark systems and states with heavy quark content is suggested. We introduce also a new mechanism of quarkoni…
We investigate the mass spectra of scalar and vector glueballs in the so-called bottom-up approach of the AdS/QCD correspondence. The holographic model of QCD includes a static dilaton background field. We study the constraints on the masses coming from perturbing the dilaton field and the geometry of the bulk.
Glueballs are particles whose valence degrees of freedom are gluons and therefore in their description the gauge field plays a dominant role. We review recent results in the physics of glueballs with the aim set on phenomenology and discuss the possibility of finding them in conventional hadronic experiments and in the Quark Gluon Plasma. In order to describe their properties we resort to a variety of theoretical treatments which include, lattice QCD, constituent models, AdS/QCD methods, and QCD sum rules. The review is supposed to be an informed guide to the literature. Therefore, we do not d…
Properties of the tensor glueball are discussed in the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto Model, a top-down holographic approach to the non-perturbative region of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD).
Calculations in unquenched QCD for the scalar glueball spectrum have confirmed previous results of Gluodynamics finding a glueball at ~ 1750 MeV. I analyze the implications of this discovery from the point of view of glueball-meson mixing at the light of the experimental scalar sprectrum.
We consider an extension to finite temperature in an AdS/ QCD model, which regards anomalous dimension contributions to get a bulk mass depending on beta function. We study the effect of beta function on mass as a function of temperature and melting temperature for scalar glueballs.
We evaluate the infinite volume, continuum limit of glueball masses in the valence (quenched) approximation to lattice QCD. For the lightest states with $J^{PC}$ of $0^{++}$ and $2^{++}$, we obtain $m_0 = 1340 \pm 160$ MeV and $m_2 = 1900 \pm 320$ MeV.
We evaluate the infinite volume, continuum limit of glueball masses in the valence (quenched) approximation to lattice QCD. For the lightest scalar and tensor states we obtain masses of $1648 \pm 58$ MeV and $2267 \pm 104$ MeV, respectively.
We present a model for odd-$C$ (negative charge parity) glueballs with three constituent gluons. The model is an extension of a previous study of two-gluon glueballs. We show that, even if spin-1 gluons seem to reproduce properly the lattice QCD spectrum for $C=+$ states, the extension for $C=-$ cannot match with the lattice results. Resorting to the helicity formalism, we show how transverse gluons fit in better agreement the lattice QCD spectrum.
Nonlocal gluon condensates are vacuum expectations of the product of gluon field strength tensors. Short-distance expansions of two-, three-, and four-gluon condensates are presented up to dimension-8 local operators. We propose a method for calculating the Wilson coefficients based on the presented expansions and the Feynman diagram technique in the background field approach. The method is demonstrated using the glueball current correlators as examples. Methodological aspects of the background field approach are discussed in relation to glueball studies within QCD sum rules. We confirm the re…
Using holographic QCD based on D4-branes and D8-anti-D8-branes, we have computed couplings of glueballs to light mesons. We describe glueball decay by explicitly calculating its decay widths and branching ratios. Interestingly, while glueballs remain less well understood both theoretically and experimentally, our results are found to be consistent with the experimental data for the scalar glueball candidate f_0(1500). More generally, holographic QCD predicts that decay of any glueball to 4 $π_0$ is surpressed, and that mixing of the lightest glueball with $q\bar{q}$ mesons is small.
Mass ratios of glueballs predicted by the latest Lattice QCD calculations in the quenched approximation agree well with four prime experimental candidates.
Identification of glueballs -- bound states of gauge bosons in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) -- is a very important open question in dynamics of the strong interaction. The search for the glueball ground state, carrying scalar quantum numbers, poses a particular challenge due to the existence of (i) several candidates for its realisation in the physical spectrum and (ii) inevitable mixing of the pure glueball state with those comprised of quarks. In this article, I discuss implications of an approach in holographic QCD where, among others, the mass and the two-pion decay of the pure scalar glue…
In the last decade, lattice QCD has been able to compute the low-lying glueball spectrum with accuracy. Like other effective approaches of QCD, potential models still have difficulties to cope with gluonic hadrons. Assuming that glueballs are bound states of valence gluons with zero current mass, it is readily understood that the use of a potential model, intrinsically non covariant, could be problematic in this case. The main challenge for this kind of model is actually to find a way to introduce properly the more relevant degree of freedom of the gluon: spin or helicity. In this work, we use…
Lattice QCD predictions have motivated several recent studies of the mixing between the predicted JPC = 0++ glueball and a qqbar nonet in the 1.3 to 1.7 GeV region. We show that results from apparently different approaches have some common features, explain why this is so and abstract general conclusions. We place particular emphasis on the flavour dependent constraints imposed by decays of the f0(1370), f0(1500) and f0(1700) to all pairs of pseudoscalar mesons. From these results we identify a systematic correlation between glueball mass, mixing, and flavour symmetry breaking and conclude tha…
We review lattice QCD results for glueballs (including a discussion of mixing with scalar mesons), hybrid mesons and exotic mesons (such as $B_s B_s$ molecules).
In the present work a consistent kinematic-based framework for glueball states is proposed. It relates the glueball, the Pomeron, QCD lattice calculations, the $0^{++}$ scalar states $f_0(1710)$ and $χ_{c0}(1P)$, the $2^{++}$ states $f_J(2220)$ and $χ_{c2}(2P)$, the baryonic charmed state $Ξ_c^+(2645)$.
An extended version of the AdS/QCD Soft-Wall model that incorporates QCD-like anomalous contributions to the dimensions of gauge theory operators is proposed. This exploratory approach leads to a relation between scalar glueball masses and beta functions. Using this relation, properties of the glueball mass spectroscopy that emerge from phenomenological beta functions proposed in the literature are investigated. The reverse problem is also considered: starting from a linear Regge trajectory which fits the lattice glueball masses, beta functions with different asymptotic infrared behaviours are…
We aim to construct quark hadron physics based on QCD. First, using lattice QCD, we study mass spectra of positive-parity and negative-parity baryons in the octet, the decuplet and the singlet representations of the SU(3) flavor. In particular, we consider the lightest negative-parity baryon, the $Λ$(1405), which can be an exotic hadron as the $N \bar K$ molecular state or the flavor-singlet three-quark state. We investigate the negative-parity flavor-singlet three-quark state in lattice QCD using the quenched approximation, where the dynamical quark-anitiquark pair creation is absent and no m…
We prove a theorem in QCD stating that in the limit of strong coupling, $g\to\infty$, the observed spectrum of glueballs in QCD is the same of a pure Yang-Mills theory, being mixing effects due to the next-to-leading order. A full effective theory for QCD is obtained and the width of the $σ$ resonance decay is straightforwardly computed. This appears as the lowest glueball state. Vacuum gluon condensate is computed that consistently support studies on the identification of this meson as a glueball.
We study two body decays of a scalar glueball. We show that in QCD a spin-0 pure glueball (a state only with gluons) cannot decay into a pair of light quarks if chiral symmetry holds exactly, i.e., the decay amplitude is chirally suppressed. However, this chiral suppression does not materialize itself at the hadron level such as in decays into $π^+π^-$ and $K^+K^-$, because in perturbative QCD the glueball couples to two (but not one) light quark pairs that hadronize to two mesons. Using QCD factorization based on an effective Lagrangian, we show that the difference of hadronization into $ππ$ …
Existence of gluonic resonances is among the early expectations of QCD. Today, QCD calculations predict the lightest glueball to be a scalar state with mass within a range of about 900-1700 MeV but there is no consensus about its experimental evidence. In a re-analysis of the phase shifts for pi pi scattering up to 1800 MeV where such states should show up we find the broad resonance f_0(600)/σcontributing to the full mass range and the narrow f_0(980) and f_0(1500) but no evidence for f_0(1370). Phenomenological arguments for the broad state to be a glueball are recalled. It is argued that th…
We discuss a notion of gluon-glueball duality analogous to quark-hadron duality. We apply this idea to the radiative decay of heavy orthoquarkonium, $Q\bar Q \to γg g$, which has been used to search for glueballs. The duality is first introduced in two simplified contexts: (i) a hypothetical version of QCD without any light quarks and (ii) QCD in the large-$N_c$ limit. We then discuss how an approximate form of this duality could hold in real QCD, based on a hierarchy of time scales in the temporal evolution of the $gg$ subsystem in radiative orthoquarkonium decay. We apply this notion of gluo…
