Hunting for glueballs in electron-positron annihilation

Area of Science:

• Particle Physics
• Quantum Chromodynamics
• High Energy Physics

Background:

• Electron-positron annihilation provides a crucial avenue for studying fundamental particle interactions.
• Glueballs, hypothetical particles composed solely of gluons, remain elusive and challenging to detect.
• Previous searches for resonances in radiative Upsilon decay, like CUSB data, offer constraints on glueball properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To calculate the cross section for the exclusive production of J/psi and glueballs (G0) in electron-positron annihilation.
• To investigate the potential contribution of charmonium-glueball pair production to observed experimental anomalies.
• To compare the production rates of J/psi+G0 with those of J/psi and other charmonium states.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing the perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) factorization formalism to calculate cross sections.
• Employing CUSB data from radiative Upsilon decay to bound the long-distance matrix element for the glueball.
• Analyzing subprocesses like gamma(*)-->(cc)(cc) and gamma(*)-->(cc)(gg) within perturbative QCD.

Main Results:

• The calculated cross section for e(+)e(-)-->J/psi+G0 at sqrt[s]=10.6 GeV is comparable to J/psi plus eta(c) or chi(c0) production.
• The J/psi+G0 production rate is approximately twice that of J/psi plus eta(c)(2S).
• The theoretical framework suggests that charmonium-glueball pair production could account for a portion of the anomalous J/psiX signal observed by Belle.

Conclusions:

• The production of charmonium-glueball pairs is theoretically plausible and calculable within perturbative QCD.
• This mechanism offers a potential explanation for the unexpectedly large J/psiX signal in experimental data.
• Further experimental investigation is warranted to confirm or refute the presence of glueball production in association with J/psi.