Abstract

We study the strong and electromagnetic decay properties of scalar mesons above 1 GeV within a chiral approach. The scalar-isoscalar states are treated as mixed states of quarkonia and glueball configurations. A fit to the experimental decay rates listed by the Particle Data Group is performed to extract phenomenological constraints on the nature of the scalar resonances. A comparison to other theoretical approaches in the scalar meson sector is discussed. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.