A Glueball- $q\bar{q}$ Filter in Central Hadron Production

Abstract

We have stumbled upon a remarkable empirical feature of central meson production which separates established $q\bar{q}$ mesons from glueball candidates. This does not appear to have been noted previously and we have no simple explanation for it. We suggest that glueballs and $q\bar{q}$ of the same $J^{PC}$ are distinguishable due to their boson versus fermion internal structure and that this leads to a different topology for central production of glueballs and $q\bar{q}$. Upon application of this test to data from the WA102 experiment we find that the $f_0(1500)$ and the $f_{2}(1900)$ show behaviour consistent with glueballs and opposite to that exhibited by established $q\bar{q}$ states.