Chiral Suppression of Scalar Glueball Decay

Because glueballs are SU(3)_{Flavor} singlets, they are expected to couple equally to u,d, and s quarks, so that equal coupling strengths to \pi^+\pi^- and K^+K^- are predicted. However, we show that chiral symmetry implies the scalar glueball amplitude for G_0 \to \qbq is proportional to the quark mass, so that mixing with \sbs mesons is enhanced and decays to K^+K^- are favored over \pi^+\pi^-. Together with evidence from lattice calculations and from experiment, this supports the hypothesis that f_0(1710) is the ground state scalar glueball.