Search for heavy flavor exotics

Abstract

Understanding the structure of hádrons is an important research topic nowadays. Recent discoveries of exotic hádrons hint at combinations of quarks in a way not seen before: these are the tetraquarks and pentaquarks with hidden heavy flavor and light quarks. Experimentally, these states are resonances lying above their dissociation thresholds. These resonances have been discussed in many theoretical papers, but special attention is also required to multiquark configurations that are stable or metastable against spontaneous breaking, i.e. those lying below their nearest threshold. It is the purpose of this project to study the existence of such exotic states beyond the quark models of quark-antiquark and three-quark states. They can be produced in heavy ion collisions, resulting from the formation of a quark-gluôn plasma. To find them requires knowledge of production mechanisms and yields and their internal structure and decay channels. This project intends to advance on the knowledge of the internal structure of these states by analyzing the possibility of producing and detecting them in relativistic heavy ion collisions. Production yields will be calculated with a microscopic transport model, via quark coalescence, and a macroscopic hydrodynamic model, via statistical hadronization. Hadron properties in the QGP will be determined by a microscopic quark model. (AU)