Glueballs from bound state equations

Abstract

Glueballs are bound states in the spectrum of quantum chromodynamics which consist only of gluons. They belong to the group of exotic hadrons which are widely studied experimentally and theoretically. We summarize how to calculate glueballs in a functional framework and discuss results for pure Yang-Mills theory. Our setup is totally self-contained with the scale being the only external input. We enumerate a range of tests that provide evidence of the stability of the results. This illustrates the potential of functional equations as a continuum first-principles method complementary to lattice calculations.