The production and decay of hybrid mesons by flux-tube breaking

An analytic calculation of the breaking of excited chromoelectric flux tubes is performed in an harmonic oscillator approximation and applied to predict the dynamics of all J^PC low-lying gluonic excitations of mesons (hybrids). Widths, branching ratios and production dynamics of some recently discovered J^PC = 1 ^-+,0 ^-+ and 1 ^-- mesons are found to be in remarkable agreement with these results. We introduce the selection rules that can be used to understand the systematics of numerical decay calculations and we find possible significant breaking of these rules for specific channels that may enable enhanced production and detection of hybrids.