Hybrid and orbitally excited mesons in quenched QCD

Abstract We use lattice methods to evaluate from first principles the spectrum of hybrid mesons produced by gluonic excitations in quenched QCD with quark masses near the strange quark mass. For the spin-exotic mesons with J PC = 1 −+ , 0 +− , and 2 +− which are not present in the quark model, we determine the lightest state to be 1 −+ with mass of 2.0(2) GeV. Results obtained for orbitally excited mesons are also presented.