# 1 A pictorial representation of mixing between quarkonium and glueball physical states through common meson-meson channels, included in the Dyson summation of the scalar bound state propagator.

Comment on the “Coupling Constant and

Quark Loop Expansion for Corrections to

the Valence Approximation” by Lee and Weingarten

M. Boglione <sup>1</sup>

and

M.R. Pennington <sup>2</sup>

<sup>1</sup> Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081,   
1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands   

<sup>2</sup> Centre for Particle Theory, University of Durham   
Durham DH1 3LE, U.K.   

Lee and Weingarten have recently criticized our calculation of quarkonium and glueball scalars as being “incomplete” and “incorrect”. Here we explain the relation of our calculations to full QCD.

PACS numbers: 14.40.Cs, 12.40.Yx, 12.39.Mk

Submitted to Physical Review 28th April 1999

Lattice techniques provide an invaluable tool for calculating the properties of hadrons . As a matter of practical necessity, these calculations involve approximations to full QCD. While the spectrum of glueballs has been computed with increasing precision , this is within quenched QCD. To make contact with experiment requires one to get closer to the full theory by allowing for the creation of $`q\overline{q}`$ pairs. Different attempts to do this for light scalars, both quarkonium and glueball, have been made by Boglione and Pennington (BP)  and by Lee and Weingarten (LW) . In a very recent paper, LW have criticized the former attempt as being incomplete and incorrect. We believe their extensive discussion is in error in claiming key aspects of QCD have been omitted by BP. Let us explain.

The BP treatment, like that of Tornqvist  and others , is based on a specific approximation to QCD, in which only hadronic (color singlet) bound states and their interactions occur. One begins with the QCD Lagrangian, for which the only parameters are quark masses and the strength of the quark-gluon interaction. $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$, and other scheme-dependent parameters, enter on renormalization. One then formally integrates out the quark and gluon degrees of freedom and obtains a Lagrangian involving only hadronic fields with their interactions, in an infinite variety of ways, all of which are determined by the parameters of the underlying theory. We then focus on the ten lightest scalar states. The bare states are realized by switching off all their interactions. Consequently, their propagators are those of bare particles: they are stable. To take this limit, each coupling in the effective Lagrangian of hadronic interactions is multiplied by a parameter $`\lambda _i`$ and these $`\lambda _i`$ are taken to zero. This does not necessarily correspond to a simple limit of QCD. Nevertheless, we plausibly assume that the ten lightest non-interacting states, that result in this limit, are the nine members of an ideally mixed quarkonium multiplet and an (orthogonal) glueball. Notice that the names quarkonium and glueball are just a convenient way of referring to the quantum numbers of these states. Individual quark and gluon fields play no role. However, they are, of course, implicit in the formation of hadronic bound states.

The Tornqvist  and BP treatment is then to switch on the “dominant” interactions of the light scalars by tuning the appropriate parameters $`\lambda _i`$ from $`01`$ for the couplings of the bound states to two (or more) pseudoscalars <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1 for the glueball, the four pion channel may be particularly important.. It is by turning on the interactions that the bare states are “dressed”. Fig. 1 represents the Dyson summation of such contributions to the inverse propagator. This dressing does not correspond to the creation of a single $`q\overline{q}`$ pair. Multiple pairs and all the gluons (Fig. 1) needed to generate color singlets and respect the chiral limit are implicitly included. Indeed, it is well-known , that any picture of pions as simple $`q\overline{q}`$ systems loses contact with the Goldstone nature of the light pseudoscalars, so crucial for describing the world accessible to experiment. This important (chiral) limit is embodied in our calculation. The resulting hadronic interactions have a dramatic effect on the scalar sector. For instance, the $`a_0`$ and an $`f_0`$ emerge at 980 MeV with large $`K\overline{K}`$ components , even though their bare states are members of an ideal multiplet 4-500 MeV/c<sup>2</sup> heavier. LW criticize these results as not including the specific gluonic counterterm, Fig. 2, and not explaining why.

The explanation is clear : our analysis only includes color singlet states internally as unitarity requires. Colored configurations of whatever kind are implicitly included and not readily dissected. If such counterterms are relevant to the dressing by pseudoscalar (Goldstone) pairs, they have been included.

In spirit, our analysis  is close to that of Ref. . Propagators are dressed by hadron clouds, as in Fig. 1. These determine the right hand cut structure of meson-meson scattering amplitudes. However, in the work of Refs. , this $`s`$–channel dynamics is assumed to control the whole scattering amplitude, with left hand cut effects (and crossed-channel exchanges) neglected, even though this violates crossing symmetry . In our treatment , particularly here where we consider mixing, only propagators are computed and no further assumptions are needed.

Of course, our analysis does have approximations. For instance, the scale of hadronic form-factors for a gluish state is assumed to be similar to that of well-established $`q\overline{q}`$ hadrons. This may not be the case. Moreover, our treatment only incorporates interactions with two pseudoscalars, and to a lesser extent with multipion channels. It is these that determine both the sign and magnitude of the mass-shifts generated. For the quarkonium states, the dressing by the light two pseudoscalar channels always produces a downward shift in mass. The size of these shifts of between one and five hundred MeV (depending on flavor) is set phenomenologically  by the $`K_0^{}(1430)`$. A much smaller shift of 10–25 MeV for the precursor glueball is set by the strength of the glueball to two pseudoscalar coupling calculated on the lattice by Sexton et al. . The suppression of the couplings of the resulting “dressed” hadron to two pseudoscalars happens  irrespective of the exact mass of the bare glueball . The inclusion of more channels, like $`\rho \rho `$ and $`K^{}\overline{K^{}}`$, may well be important in dressing this state and alter the rather small mass-shifts we found for that sector both in magnitude and sign. Of course, only physically accessible hadronic intermediate states contribute to the imaginary part of the propagator, Fig. 1. Unopen channels contribute only to the real (or dispersive) part and result in renormalizations of the undressed parameters.

By including, in our calculation key aspects of the hadron world, in the way described here and in , we believe we must have approached closer to full QCD — despite the criticism of Lee and Weingarten.

Note added: Long after the submission of this paper to Physical Review, Lee, Vaccarino and Weingarten have repeated their comments identically in Refs. .

The authors acknowledge partial support from the EU-TMR Program EuroDA$`\mathrm{\Phi }`$NE, Contract No. CT98-0169.