How to Detect the Lightest Glueball

Abstract

We suggest a procedure for detecting the lightest glueball in a head-on collision of photons whose center-of-mass energy in the range 1.3–2 GeV. A phenomenological basis for this suggestion is recent evidence for scattering of light by light in LHC experiments. With this evidence, the cross section of the lightest glueball creation in $$\gamma\gamma$$ collisions is estimated to be $$\sim$$ 60 nb. The predominant mode of the lightest glueball decay, predicted from the gauge/gravity duality, is the decay into $$\rho^{0}\rho^{0}$$ . Since the $$\rho^{0}$$ decays into $$\pi^{+}\pi^{-}$$ , a drastic increase of the $$\pi^{+}\pi^{-}\pi^{+}\pi^{-}$$ yield is expected as the center-of-mass energy approaches the mass of the lightest glueball. It is this fact which will be the unique signature of the lightest glueball detection.