Chiral Nonet Mixing in $\eta' \rightarrow \eta \pi\pi$ Decay

TL;DR

This paper investigates scalar meson mixing in the decay $ $ta' ightarrow ta\u03c0 within a generalized linear sigma model, revealing improved predictions when including multi-nonet mixing and pion final state interactions, supporting the four-quark nature of light scalar mesons.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive model incorporating multiple scalar and pseudoscalar nonets to better predict decay properties and meson mixing phenomena.

Findings

Inclusion of nonet mixing improves decay width predictions.

Model reasonably predicts energy dependence of decay amplitude.

Supports four-quark composition of scalar mesons below 1 GeV.

Abstract

Underlying mixing of scalar mesons is studied in $\eta'\rightarrow \eta\pi\pi$ decay within a generalized linear sigma model of low-energy QCD which contains two nonets of scalar mesons and two nonets of pseudoscalar mesons (a quark-antiquark nonet and a four quark nonet). The model has been previously employed in various investigations of the underlying mixings among scalar mesons below and above 1 GeV (as well as those of their pseudoscalar chiral partners) and has provided a coherent global picture for the physical properties and quark substructure of these states. It is found that the linear sigma model with only a single lowest-lying nonet is not accurate in predicting the decay width, but inclusion of the mixing of this nonet with the next-to-lowest lying nonet, together with the effect of final state interaction of pions, significantly improves this prediction and agrees with experiment up to about 1\%. It is also shown that while the prediction of the leading order of the generalized model for the Dalitz parameters is not close to the experiment, the model is able to give a reasonable prediction of the energy dependencies of the normalized decay amplitude squared and that this is expected to improve with further refinement of the complicated underlying mixings. Overall this investigation provides further support for the global picture of scalar mesons: those below 1 GeV are predominantly four-quark states and significantly mix with those above 1 GeV which are closer to the conventional p-wave quark-antiquark states.