A theory of scalar mesons

We discuss the effect of the instanton induced, six-fermion effective Lagrangian on the decays of the lightest scalar mesons in the diquark-antidiquark picture. This addition allows for a remarkably good description of light scalar meson decays. The same effective Lagrangian produces a mixing of the lightest scalars with the positive parity q (q) over bar states. Comparing with previous work where the q (q) over bar mesons are identified with the nonet at 1200-1700 MeV, we find that the mixing required to fit the mass spectrum is in good agreement with the instanton coupling obtained from light scalar decays. A coherent picture of scalar mesons as a mixture of tetraquark states (dominating in the lightest mesons) and heavy q (q) over bar states (dominating in the heavier mesons) emerges. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.