Modeling the glueball spectrum by a closed bosonic membrane

We use an analogy between the Yang-Mills theory Hamiltonian and the matrix model description of the closed bosonic membrane theory to calculate the spectrum of glueballs in the large N_c limit. Some features of the Yang-Mills theory vacuum, such as the screening of the topological charge and vacuum topological susceptibility, are discussed. We show that the topological susceptibility has different properties depending on whether it is calculated in the weak coupling or strong coupling regimes of the theory. A mechanism of the formation of the pseudoscalar glueball state within pure Yang-Mills theory is proposed and studied.