The Physics of Glueballs Vincent Mathieu Groupe de Physique Nucl´eaire Th´eorique, Universit´e de Mons-Hainaut, Acad´emie universitaire Wallonie-Bruxelles, Place du Parc 20, BE-7000 Mons, Belgium.
[email protected] Nikolai Kochelev Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Moscow region, 141980 Russia.
[email protected] Vicente Vento Departament de F´ısica Te`orica and Institut de F´ısica Corpuscular, Universitat de Val`encia-CSIC, E-46100 Burjassot (Valencia), Spain.
[email protected] Glueballs are particles whose valence degrees of freedom are gluons and therefore in their descrip- tion the gauge field plays a dominant role. We review recent results in the physics of glueballs with the aim set on phenomenology and discuss the possibility of finding them in conventional hadronic experiments and in the Quark Gluon Plasma. In order to describe their properties we resort to a va- riety of theoretical treatments which include, lattice QCD, constituent models, AdS/QCD methods, and QCD sum rules. The review is supposed to be an informed guide to the literature. Therefore, we do not discuss in detail technical developments but refer the reader to the appropriate references. I. INTRODUCTION Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the hadronic interactions. It is an elegant theory whose full non perturbative solution has escaped our knowledge since its formulation more than 30 years ago.[1] The theory is asymptotically free[2, 3] and confining.[4] A particularly good test of our understanding of the nonperturbative aspects of QCD is to study particles where the gauge field plays a more important dynamical role than in the standard hadrons.