28.06.16 16:15
The extraordinary case of light scalar resonances: what do we know and why should we care?
José R. Peláez (Madrid)
Light scalar mesons play a relevant role in several aspects of particle and nuclear physics: from nucleon attraction to chiral symmetry breaking in QCD to the identification of glueballs or even the anthropic considerations. Yet, for more than five decades, their existence and nature has been a matter of controversy. Only relatively recently a fairly good precision and understanding has been reached thanks to new experimental results as well as elaborated techniques based on dispersion theory and/or effective field theory. Moreover, there is mounting evidence that these states are not ordinary mesons naively made of a quark and an antiquark. In this talk we will review some history and motivation to study light scalars, their present status and some recent developments.