Higher Quarkonia

Abstract

We discriminate gluonic hadrons from conventional $q\bar q$ states by surveying radial and orbital excitations of all I=0 and I=1 $n\bar n$ systems anticipated up to 2.1 GeV. We give detailed predictions of their quasi-two-body branching fractions and identify characteristic decay modes that can isolate quarkonia. Several of the ``missing mesons'' with L$_{q\bar q}=2$ and L$_{q\bar q}=3$ are predicted to decay dominantly into certain S+P and S+D modes, and should appear in experimental searches for hybrids in the same mass region. We also consider the topical issues of whether some of the recently discovered or controversial meson resonances, including glueball and hybrid candidates, can be accommodated as quarkonia.