Is chiral symmetry restored in the excited meson spectrum?

The large degeneracy observed in the excited meson spectrum by the Cristal Barrel Collaboration in the experimental data on proton-antiproton annihilation in flight into mesons in the range 1.9-2.4 GeV has been interpreted as a signal of chiral symmetry restoration. In this work we suggest that such degeneracy may be an indication of the confinement potential modification by color screening. The experimental data can be fairly well reproduced in a constituent quark model with a screened linear confinement potential without changing the dynamical quark mass. Observables that could discriminate our model from those which explicitly restore the chiral symmetry are proposed. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.