Chiral suppression of scalar-glueball decay.
Since glueballs are SU(3)Flavor singlets, they should couple equally to u, d, and s quarks, so that equal coupling strengths to pi+ pi- and K+ K- are expected. However, we show that chiral symmetry implies the scalar-glueball amplitude for G0 --> qq is proportional to the quark mass, so that mixing with ss mesons is enhanced and decays to K+ K- are favored over pi+ pi-. Together with evidence from lattice calculations and experiment, this supports the hypothesis that f0(1710) is the ground state scalar glueball.
Chanowitz
Michael S
MS
Theoretical Physics Group, Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. chanowitz@lbl.gov