Light Meson Spectroscopy

We survey the current status of light meson spectroscopy. We begin with a general introduction to meson spectroscopy and and its importance in understanding the physical states of Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD). Phemenological models of hadron spectroscopy are described with particular emphasis on the constituent quark model and the qualitative features it predicts for the meson spectrum. We next discuss expectations for hadrons lying outside the quark model, such as hadron states with excited gluonic degrees of freedom. These states include so-called hybrids and glueballs, as well as multiquark states. The established meson states are compared to the quark model predictions and we find that most meson states are well described by the quark model. However, a number of states in the light-quark sector do not fit in well, suggesting the existence of hadronic states with additional degrees of freedom. We end with a brief description of future directions in meson spectroscopy.