Does the light and broad sigma(500) exist?

Abstract

The lightest scalar and pseudoscalar nonets are discussed within the framework of the broken U3$\times$U3 linear sigma model, and it is shown that already at the tree level this model works remarkably well predicting scalar masses and couplings not far from present experimental values, when all parameters are fixed from the pseudoscalar masses and decay constants. It is argued that this strongly suggests that the light and very broad $σ$ resonance exists near 500 MeV.