arXiv · 2604.04803
Glueballs, Constituent Gluons and Instantons
Abstract
We present a constituent two-gluon description of the lowest-lying glueball states in pure Yang--Mills theory, calibrated against quenched lattice results. The framework incorporates an instanton-induced dynamical gluon mass, Casimir-scaled adjoint confinement, the short-distance adjoint Coulomb interaction, and instanton-induced central and tensor forces. The scalar $0^{++}$ glueball is found to be exceptionally compact, with a radius of order the instanton size, $\rho \sim \frac 13\,\mathrm{fm}$, consistent with lattice indications. By contrast, the tensor $2^{++}$ state remains spatially extended due to the centrifugal barrier. We also discuss the role of $S$-$D$ mixing. A semiclassical analysis further supports Regge behavior for excited states, in agreement with lattice results.
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Edward Shuryak, Ismail Zahed. 2026-04-06. Glueballs, Constituent Gluons and Instantons. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04803
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