Glueball Decay in the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto Model and Finite Quark Masses

We discuss recent results on the calculation of glueball decay rates in the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model, which favor the $f_0(1710)$ meson as a glueball candidate. The flavor asymmetric decay of $f_0(1710)$ is frequently attributed to a putative chiral suppression in glueball decays, which is however questionable in view of the large constituent quark masses induced by chiral symmetry breaking. We find that this can be explained by what we call nonchiral enhancement when finite quark masses are included in the holographic model, with good quantitative agreement with experimental data for $f_0(1710)$. Assuming the latter to indeed be a nearly pure glueball, the model makes essentially parameter-free and thus falsifiable predictions for its decay rates involving vector mesons and an upper limit on the $\eta\eta'$ decay rate.