From black holes to QCD: The glueball spectrum at strong coupling

The calculation of glueball masses based on Maldacena's duality between sup ergravity and Yang-Mills theory is reviewed. Earlier work for the spin zero sector is extended to the full J(PC) multiplet for both QCD(3) and QCD(4). Contrary to expectation, the mass of the 0(++) state associated with the g raviton is smaller than the mass of the (0) over tilde(++) state from the d ilaton. The strong coupling results for IIA supergravity, when restricted t o the QCD(4) superselection sector, compare remarkably well with the "known " glueball spectrum of lattice QCD simulations.