B decays into light scalar particles and glueball

The recent observations of f ₀(980) in charmless B decays motivate further studies of scalar particle and glueball production in these processes. Amplitudes for charmless two-body B decays involving the members of the scalar nonet are presented based on the symmetries of the dominant penguin contribution. Different scenarios for the lightest scalar nonet are investigated in view of the presently available data. We describe the evidence from B decays for f ₀(1500) with a flavor octet like mixing and the hints towards the members of the nonet of lowest mass. There is further support for the hypothesis of a broad 0 ^{+ +} glueball acting as coherent background especially in . The estimated B decay rates into gluonic mesons represent a sizable fraction of the theoretically derived decay rate for .Received: 23 April 2004, Revised: 27 October 2004, Published online: 21 December 2004Work supported in part by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds.