Glueballs and vector mesons at NICA

TL;DR

This paper discusses how NICA can advance the understanding of glueballs and vector mesons, including their identification, properties, and behavior in high-energy environments, contributing to strong interaction physics.

Contribution

It highlights the potential of NICA to experimentally identify glueballs and study their influence on meson properties and chiral-symmetry restoration in high-energy nuclear matter.

Findings

NICA can help identify glueball candidates via J/Psi decays.

Glueballs may influence signatures of chiral-symmetry restoration.

Glueball properties could be modified in high-energy medium.

Abstract

Two interconnected fields of interest are suggested for NICA. Firstly, existence of glueballs is predicted by the theory of strong interaction but -- even after decades of research -- glueball identification in the physical spectrum is still unclear. NICA can help to ascertain experimental glueball candidates via J/Psi decays whose yield is expected to be large. Importance of glueballs is not limited to vacuum: since they couple to other meson states, glueballs can also be expected to influence signatures of chiral-symmetry restoration in the high-energy phase of strong dynamics. Mass shifting or in-medium broadening of vector and axial-vector mesons may occur there but the extent of such phenomena is still uncertain. Additionally, glueball properties could also be modified in medium. Exploration of these issues is the second suggested field of interest that can be pursued at NICA.