Exploring Glueball Candidates: The f₂'(1525) Meson in pPb Collisions at the LHCb Experiment

According to the standard model of particle physics, hadrons are typically classified as mesons or baryons. However, they may also form in less common exotic configurations such as tetraquarks and pentaquarks, many of which have been observed in recent years by the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) Collaboration. A rarer and still unconfirmed possibility is the glueball, a bound state composed entirely of gluons. Despite decades of theoretical and experimental work, definitive observation of a glueball remains outstanding. This analysis places emphasis on the f₂' (1525) meson as a promising candidate in the glueball search. We investigated resonances f₂ (1270), f₂' (1525) and f₀(1710) using data collected in 2016 from proton-proton (pp), proton-lead (pPb) and lead-proton (Pbp) collisions at √s_NN = 8.16 TeV. The LHCb detector at LHC can measure dikaon spectra with high mass resolution and excellent particle identification capabilities. The forward kinematic region covered by the LHCb (2<y<4.5) is dominated by high gluon densities and, in principle, could be a source of glueball formation. Exploring these collision systems may give insight into the properties of these resonances in different nuclear environments, advancing our understanding of glueball signatures.