From Black Holes to Glueballs: The QCD₃ Tensor Glueball at Strong Coupling

A strong coupling calculation of glueball masses based on the duality between supergravity and Yang-Mills theory is presented. Earlier work is extended to non-zero spin. Fluctuations in the gravitational metric lead to the 2^{++} state on the leading Pomeron trajectory with a mass relation: m(0^{++}) < m(2^{++}) < m(1^{-+}). Contrary to expectation, the mass of our new 0^{++} state (m^2=5.4573) associated with the graviton is smaller than the mass of the ${\tilde 0}^{++}$ state (m^2=11.588) from the dilaton, which in fact is exactly degenerate with the tensor 2^{++}.