SCALAR MESONS IN PHI RADIATIVE DECAY - THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR SPECTROSCOPY AND FOR STUDIES OF CP VIOLATION AT PHI FACTORIES

Existing predictions for the branching ratio for phi --> KKgammaBAR via phi --> Sgamma (where S denotes one of the scalar mesons f0(975) and a0(980)) vary by several orders of magnitude. Given the importance of these processes for both hadron spectroscopy and CP-violation studies at phi factories (where phi --> K0K0gammaBAR poses a possible background problem), this state of affairs is very undesirable. We show that the variety of predictions is due in part to errors and in part to differences in modelling. The latter variation leads us to argue that the radiative decays of these scalar states are interesting in their own right and may offer unique insights into the nature of the scalar mesons. As a byproduct we find that the branching ratio for phi --> K0K0gammaBAR is less than or similar to 0(10(-7)) pose no significant background to proposed studies of CP violation.