Role of Scalar Mesons in Low Energy QCD and their Connections to Non Perturbative Higgs Dynamics

The purpose of this proposal is to investigate the properties and quark substructure of the light scalar mesons below two GeV. The methodology is to look at effective models of strong interactions such as linear and non-linear chiral lagrangians. The hope is to gain insight into the makeup of these mesons in terms of the underlying quarks. For example, some of the light mesons have been found to be a mixture of two and 4 quark states. It is hoped that a better understanding of the scalar mesons will shed light on electroweak symmetry breaking and on the properties of the D mesons which have been investigated by both the BaBar Collaboration and Fermilab experiments. The research will involve undergraduates in various computational aspects of the investigation.