Toward the existence of odderon as a three-gluon bound state

Abstract

Inspired by the evidence of the odderon exchange recently observed by the D0 and TOTEM Collaborations, a QCD sum rule investigation is performed to study the odderon as a three-gluon bound state. There may exist six lowest-lying three-gluon odderons with the quantum numbers $J^{PC}=1/2/3^{\pm -}$. We systematically construct their interpolating currents, and calculate their mass spectra. To verify their existence, we propose to search for the spin-3 odderons in their $VVV$ and $VVP$ decay channels directly at LHC, with $V$ and $P$ light vector and pseudoscalar mesons respectively.

Comments: revised version to be published in PRD