Holographic Glueball Decay

TL;DR

This paper presents holographic QCD calculations of glueball decay rates, showing good agreement with experimental data for the scalar glueball candidate $f_0(1500)$ and predicting narrow decay widths for other glueballs.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed decay rate calculations for multiple glueball states within the Sakai-Sugimoto holographic model, aligning theoretical predictions with experimental observations.

Findings

Scalar glueball mass close to $f_0(1500)$

Decay rate into two pions matches experimental data

Glueballs are predicted to have narrow decay widths

Abstract

We announce new results on glueball decay rates in the Sakai-Sugimoto model, a realization of holographic QCD from first principles that has only one coupling constant and an overall mass scale as free parameters. We extend a previous investigation by Hashimoto, Tan, and Terashima who have considered the lowest scalar glueball which arises from a somewhat exotic polarization of supergravity modes and whose mass is uncomfortably small in comparison with lattice results. On the other hand, the scalar glueball dual to the dilaton turns out to have a mass of about twice the mass of the rho meson (1487 MeV), very close to the scalar meson $f_0(1500)$ that is frequently interpreted as predominantly glue. Calculating the decay rate into two pions we find a surprisingly good agreement with experimental data for the $f_0(1500)$. We have also obtained decay widths for tensor and excited scalar glueballs, indicating universal narrowness.