Inelastic meson-meson scattering in hadronic matter

Abstract

We review studies of inelastic meson-meson scattering. In nonperturbative schemes with chiral-perturbation-theory Lagrangians and in models based on effective meson Lagrangians, inelastic meson-meson scattering leads to the successful identification of resonances in meson-meson reactions, adequate inclusion of final state interactions in particle decays, and so on. For mesons of which each consists of a quark and an antiquark, inelastic meson-meson scattering may be caused by quark-antiquark annihilation, quark-antiquark creation, quark interchange, and quark-antiquark annihilation and creation. In transition amplitudes for meson-meson scattering mesonic quark-antiquark relative-motion wave functions depend on hadronic matter, and transition potentials are given in perturbative quantum chromodynamics. Via transition amplitudes the cross sections for inelastic meson-meson scattering depend on the temperature of hadronic matter. Some prominent temperature dependence of the cross sections has been found. Inelastic meson-meson scattering becomes even more significant in proton-proton collisions and lead-lead collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.