Do glueballs contribute in heavy-ion collisions?

Abstract

In heavy-ion collision simulations many hadron states and/or parton degrees of freedom are included in order to obtain the observables. Meson spectroscopy, for example, considers the 0++ meson as a mixture of and glue. This fact is usually not considered in heavy-ion collision physics. In the present work, we consider two extreme possibilities for the constitution of the 0++ meson, either as a pure glueball or as meson. The scattering amplitude and cross sections with constituent interchange are determined for the two situations. The comparison showed that the glueball–glueball elastic scattering cross section for a colour singlet state is between one to two orders of magnitude smaller than the corresponding state. The 2++ glueball–glueball interaction is also evaluated with similar behaviour. Thus, glueball–glueball scattering is not very likely to introduce significant changes in heavy-ion collision observables.