Abstract
A recent analysis by the LHCb Collaboration suggests the existence of three narrow pentaquarklike states—the , , and —instead of just one in the previous analysis [the ]. The closeness of the to the threshold and the to the threshold suggests a molecular interpretation of these resonances. We show that these three pentaquarklike resonances can be naturally accommodated in a contact-range effective field theory description that incorporates heavy-quark spin symmetry. This description leads to the prediction of all the seven possible -wave heavy antimeson-baryon molecules [that is, there should be four additional molecular pentaquarks in addition to the , , and ], providing the first example of a heavy-quark spin symmetry molecular multiplet that is complete. If this is confirmed, it will not only give us an impressive example of the application of heavy-quark symmetries and effective field theories in hadron physics, it will also uncover a clear and powerful ordering principle for the molecular spectrum, reminiscent of the SU(3)-flavor multiplets to which the light hadron spectrum conforms.
- Received 12 April 2019
- Revised 9 May 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.242001
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society