Eur. Phys. J. C (2009) 63: 423-433
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-1111-2

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

The scalar glueball in the instanton vacuum

¹ Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, 72076, Tübingen, Germany
² Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Trento, Via Sommarive 15, Povo (Trento), 38050, Italy
³ I.N.F.N, Gruppo Collegato di Trento, Via Sommarive 15, Povo (Trento), 38050, Italy

^* e-mail: faccioli@science.unitn.it

Received: 1 July 2008
Revised: 18 December 2008
Published online: 1 August 2009

Abstract

We study the contribution of instantons to the binding and the mass of the lightest scalar glueball, in gluon dynamics. We show that the short-range correlations introduced by such non-perturbative vacuum fluctuations are sufficient to give rise to a scalar glueball bound state, with a mass in good agreement with the results of recent lattice calculations.