Dispersive analysis of excited glueball states

Abstract

Motivated by the determination for the spin-parity quantum numbers of the $X(2370)$ meson at BESIII, we extend our dispersive analysis on hadronic ground states to excited states. The idea is to start with the dispersion relation which a correlation function obeys, and subtract the known ground-state contribution from the involved spectral density. Solving the resultant dispersion relation as an inverse problem with available operator-product-expansion inputs, we extract excited-state masses from the subtracted spectral density. This formalism is verified by means of the application to the series of $\rho$ resonances, which establishes the $\rho(770)$, $\rho(1450)$ and $\rho(1700)$ mesons one by one under the sequential subtraction procedure. Our previous study has suggested the admixture of the $f_0(1370)$, $f_0(1500)$ and $f_0(1710)$ mesons (the $\eta(1760)$ meson) to be the lightest scalar (pseudoscalar) glueball. The present work predicts that the $f_0(2200)$ ($X(2370)$) meson is the first excited scalar (pseudoscalar) glueball.