The experimental status of glueballs

Glueballs and other resonances with large gluonic components are predicted as bound states by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The lightest (scalar) glueball is estimated to have a mass in the range from 1 to 2 GeV/c2; pseudoscalar and tensor glueballs are expected at higher masses. Many different experiments exploiting a large variety of production mechanisms have presented results in recent years on light mesons with J P C = 0 + + , 0 − + , and 2 + + quantum numbers. This review looks at the experimental status of glueballs. Good evidence exists for a scalar glueball which is mixed with nearby mesons, but a full understanding is still missing. Evidence for tensor and pseudoscalar glueballs are weak at best. Theoretical expectations of phenomenological models and QCD on the lattice are briefly discussed.