Glueballs as the Ithaca of meson spectroscopy

Abstract

This compact review about gluonium focuses on a slate of theoretical efforts; among the many standing works, I have selected several that are meant to assist in the identification, among ordinary mesons, of the few Yang-Mills glueball configurations that populate the energy region below 3 GeV. This includes $J/\psi$ radiative and vector-meson decays, studies of scalar meson mixing, of high-energy cross sections via the Pomeron and the odderon, glueball decays, etc. The weight of accumulated evidence seems to support the $f_0(1710)$ as having a large (and the largest) glueball component among the scalars, although no single observable by itself is conclusive. Further tests would be welcome, such as exclusive $f_J$ production at asymptotically high $s$ and $t$. No clear experimental candidates for the pseudoscalar or tensor glueball stand out yet, and continuing investigations trying to sort them out will certainly teach us much more about mesons.

Comments: 27 pages, 11 figure files