Exotic states and fundamental interactions at LEAR and DAΦNE Original Research Article

An overview is given of the main achievements obtained at the LEAR of CERN in the search for exotic mesons. The impact of these results on the present understanding of the hadronic interaction is outlined. Particular attention is devoted to the discovery of the ‖0(1500), the strong candidate for the ground state scalar glueball, and to the definite evidence of the View the MathML source, with exotic quantum numbers JPC = 1−+, which is an excellent candidate for a hybrid meson. The remarkable hypernuclear physics program of DAΦNE, at the Frascati laboratory, and its prospects in exploring fundamental interactions is reviewed, with emphasis on the unique possibility offered to study weak non-mesonic decays of Λ-hypernuclei.