Observation of a_{0}^{0}(980)-f_{0}(980) Mixing

Evidence of isospin-symmetry violation in high-energy collisions of atomic nuclei

Strong interactions preserve an approximate isospin symmetry between up (u) and down (d) quarks, part of the more general flavor symmetry. In the case of K meson production, if this isospin symmetry were exact, it would result in equal numbers of charged (K+ and K-) and neutral (K0 andK ¯ 0 ) mesons produced in collisions of isospin-symmetric atomic nuclei. Here, we report results on the relative abundance of charged over neutral K meson production in argon and scandium nuclei collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 11.9 GeV per nucleon pair. We find that the production of K+ and K- mesons at mid-rapidity is (18.4 ± 6.1)% higher than that of the neutral K mesons. Although with large uncertainties, earlier data on nucleus-nucleus collisions in the collision center-of-mass energy range 2.6 < s N N < 200 GeV are consistent with the present result. Using well-established models for hadron production, we demonstrate that known isospin-symmetry breaking effects and the initial nuclei containing more neutrons than protons lead only to a small (few percent) deviation of the charged-to-neutral kaon ratio from unity at high energies. Thus, they cannot explain the measurements. The significance of the flavor-symmetry violation beyond the known effects is 4.7σ when the compilation of world data with uncertainties quoted by the experiments is used. New systematic, high-precision measurements and theoretical efforts are needed to establish the origin of the observed large isospin-symmetry breaking.

Light meson physics at BESIII

Studies of light meson decays are important tools to perform precision tests of the effective field theories, determine transition form factors and test fundamental symmetries. With very high statistics data samples, the Beijing Spectrometer III (BESIII) experiment provides a unique laboratory for light meson studies and is contributing significantly to a variety of these investigations. A brief review of recent progress in light meson decay studied at the BESIII experiment, including detailed studies of common decay dynamics, searches for rare/forbidden decays and new particles, is presented. Finally, together with descriptions of different experimental techniques, prospects for future studies of light mesons are discussed in some detail.

A review on partial-wave dynamics with chiral effective field theory and dispersion relation

The description of strong interaction physics of low-lying resonances is out of the valid range of perturbative QCD. Chiral effective field theories (EFTs) have been developed to tackle the issue. Partial wave dynamics is the systematic tool to decode the underlying physics and reveal the properties of those resonances. It is extremely powerful and helpful for our understanding of the non-perturbative regime, especially when dispersion techniques are utilized simultaneously. Recently, plenty of exotic/ordinary hadrons have been reported by experiment collaborations, e.g. LHCb, Belle, and BESIII, etc. In this review, we summarize the recent progress on the applications of partial wave dynamics combined with chiral EFTs and dispersion relations, on related topics, with emphasis onππ,πK,πNandK̄Nscatterings.

Amplitude Analysis of D_{s}^{+}→π^{+}π^{0}η and First Observation of the W-Annihilation Dominant Decays D_{s}^{+}→a_{0}(980)^{+}π^{0} and D_{s}^{+}→a_{0}(980)^{0}π^{+}

We present the first amplitude analysis of the decay D_{s}^{+}→π^{+}π^{0}η. We use an e^{+}e^{-} collision data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.19  fb^{-1} collected with the BESIII detector at a center-of-mass energy of 4.178 GeV. We observe for the first time the W-annihilation dominant decays D_{s}^{+}→a_{0}(980)^{+}π^{0} and D_{s}^{+}→a_{0}(980)^{0}π^{+}. We measure the absolute branching fraction B(D_{s}^{+}→a_{0}(980)^{+(0)}π^{0^{(}+)},a_{0}(980)^{+(0)}→π^{+(0)}η)=(1.46±0.15_{stat}±0.23_{sys})%, which is larger than the branching fractions of other measured pure W-annihilation decays by at least one order of magnitude. In addition, we measure the branching fraction of D_{s}^{+}→π^{+}π^{0}η with significantly improved precision.

New information on the strong isospin symmetry breaking in the reactions of the a00(980) and f0(980) resonance production

We discuss the isotopic symmetry breaking as a tool of studying the production mechanisms and nature of light scalar mesons. The anomalous isospin breaking effects can appear not only due to the $ a_0^0(980) - {f_0}(980) $ mixing, but also for any mechanism of the production of the $ \bar{K} $ pairs with a definite isospin in the S wave.

Light meson decays at BESIII

The BESIII experiment has accumulated the world’s largest data samples of 1.3 billion J/ψ events and 0.45 billion ψ(3686) events, which provide a unique opportunity to investigate light meson decays. The η and η′ decays are sensitive tools for investigations of π − π and η − π interactions, symmetry breaking, and serve as a test of chiral perturbation theory. In recent years considerable results on η and η′ decays were achieved at the BESIII experiment. In this proceeding, we present the significant progresses on amplitude analyses of Dalitz decays η' → 3π,η' → ηππ, and radiative decay η' → γπ+π−, η' → γγπ0. Additionally, the $a_0^0\left( {980} \right) - {f_0}\left( {980} \right)$ mixing is an important probe to the nature of those two lightest scalar mesons. The first observation of $a_0^0\left( {980} \right) - {f_0}\left( {980} \right)$ mixing is also presented, which will help to improve the understanding of the nature of $a_0^0\left( {980} \right)$ and f0(980).