First radial excitations of the scalar-meson nonet and of the pseudoscalar
mesons eta and eta' are described within a nonlocal chiral quark model of t
he Nambu-Jona-Lasinio type with 't Hooft interaction. In this model, simple
form factors are used, which allows us to describe first radial excitation
s of the mesons and to retain the gap equations describing spontaneous brea
kdown of chiral symmetry in the standard form. The external parameters of f
orm factors are fixed by the masses of excited pseudoscalar mesons, and the
same form factors are used to predict the masses of excited scalar mesons.
The strong decays of excited scalar mesons and of eta and eta' mesons are
described in satisfactory agreement with experimental data. (C) 2000 MAIK "
Nauka/Interperiodica".