BESIII collaboration identifies glueball matter and advances particle physics

The BESIII collaboration, which includes contributors from INFN, has announced the identification of glueballs—a form of matter composed entirely of gluons. This discovery follows seventeen years of data collection at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider in China and addresses a scientific search that has lasted nearly fifty years.

According to quantum chromodynamics (QCD), gluons act as the mediators of the strong interaction that binds quarks within protons and neutrons. Because gluons can attract one another, they can form bound states known as glueballs. The identification of these particles provides a fundamental verification of the non-Abelian gauge structure of QCD at low energies.

In a related development, the BESIII collaboration utilized quantum entanglement with antimatter to perform a decay measurement of the lambda hyperon. By using its antimatter partner as a quantum tag, researchers were able to measure a decay parameter that had not undergone comparable experimental scrutiny in 35 years. While the new results align with conventional theoretical predictions, they stand in tension with previous measurements.