Where are the hidden-charm hexaquarks?
Abstract
In this work, we carry out the study of hidden-charm hexaquark states with the typical configurations (). The mass spectra of hidden-charm hexaquark states are obtained within the chromo-magnetic interaction model. In addition to the mass spectra analysis, we further illustrate their two-body strong decay behaviors. There exist some compact bound states which cannot decay through the strong interaction. Hopefully our results will help to search for such types of the exotic states in the future experiments.
I Introduction
With the improvement of the luminosity and precision in experiment, more and more charmonium-like states and states have been observed Choi:2003ue ; Acosta:2003zx ; Abazov:2004kp ; Aaij:2014jqa ; Ablikim:2016qzw ; Ablikim:2017oaf ; Ablikim:2020hsk ; BESIII:2016adj ; Aaij:2015tga ; Aaij:2016phn ; Aaij:2019vzc . The present situation of hadronic states is far beyond the conventional quark model. The first doubly charm tetraquark with the configuration was observed by the LHCb Collaboration Franz:2021talk , and this newly discovered particle is explicitly an exotic state which cannot be classified into the conventional mesons.
The hexaquark states were proposed and the spectra of light-flavored hexaquarks were dynamically investigated very early after the birth of quark model. The resonance with has been reported by CELSIUS/WASA and WASA-at-COSY Collaborations Faldt:2011zv ; Adlarson:2011bh ; Adlarson:2012fe , and it is expected to be a dibaryon which contains 6 constituent quarks. The deuteron is also a dibaryon. Jaffe firstly found the particle whose hyperfine interaction is much larger than that for two separated baryons within the chromo-magnetic interaction model Jaffe:1976yi , and this dibaryon was also studied within other framework Mackenzie:1985vv ; Aerts:1984vv ; Balachandran:1983dj ; Straub:1988mz ; Paganis:1999ux ; Yost:1985mj ; Rosner:1985yh ; Karl:1987cg . Moreover, the heavy dibaryons () Oka:2013iua ; Gerasyuta:2011yg ; Oka:2019mrd ; Liu:2012zzo ; Pepin:1998ih , doubly-heavy dibaryons () Liu:2012zzo ; Vijande:2016nzk ; Wang:2017sto ; Meng:2017fwb ; Meguro:2011nr ; Li:2012bt ; Leandri:1995zm , triply-heavy dibaryons () Wang:2020jqu ; Chen:2018pzd ; Richard:2020zxb , the other fully light dibaryons () Zhang:1997ny ; Gerasyuta:2010hn ; SilvestreBrac:1992yg ; Park:2015nha ; Oka:1988yq ; Chen:2019vdh , and even fully heavy dibaryons () Huang:2020bmb were also proposed and discussed.
The hadronic states composed of three quarks and three antiquarks are another class of heaxquarks. The hidden-charm and hidden-bottom hexaquarks are especially focused on since they have much larger masses and thus are more easily distinguished from the ordinary mesons. With the hidden-charm tetraquark and pentaquark states observed in experiment, the discovery of hidden-charm hexaquarks would also come true in future.
Very recently, BESIII collaboration measured the cross section of the process and further confirms the existence of three charmonium-like states wherein is closed to the threshold of - systems BESIII:2021njb . Before this, the structure has been observed in the process of in the Belle and BarBar experiments Belle:2007umv ; Belle:2014wyt ; BaBar:2012hpr . was interpreted as a higher charmonium in Ref. Wang:2020prx and a hexaquark state configured by the triquark-antitriquark clusters in Ref. Qiao:2007ce . The charmonium states can very likely be bound inside light hadronic matters, and such hadro-charmonium may explain the properties of the peak Dubynskiy:2008mq . G. Cotugno et al. suggested that the two observations of and are likely to be due to the same state constituted by four quarks in Ref. Cotugno:2009ys .
The - structure was introduced to explain the production and decays of in Refs. Qiao:2007ce ; Qiao:2005av ; Chen:2011cta . was observed in process in the Belle experiments Belle:2008xmh and is considered as a candidate of bound state Lee:2011rka . Especially, heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory was applied to systemically study the -, -, and - systems Chen:2013sba , and the results suggest that and could be - baryonia. The two states are also suggested to be a mixture, with mixing close to maximal, of two states of hadrochamonium Li:2013ssa .
The masses of baryonia with the open and hidden charm, bottomness and strangeness are studied in the framework of dispersion relation technique in Refs. Gerasyuta:2013esc ; Gerasyuta:2020gyy ; Gerasyuta:2020fii . The heavy baryon-antibaryon molecule states are investigated within the effective field theory Lu:2017dvm . The hidden-charm and hidden-bottom hexaquark states were discussed within the QCD sum rules Wan:2019ake ; Chen:2016ymy .
These work stimulate us to further study the hidden-charm hexaquark states. In this work we systemically investigate their mass spectra, stability, and two-body decay within the chromo-magnetic interaction (CMI) model.
The simple chromo-magnetic interaction arises from the one-gluon-exchange potential and further causes the mass splittings DeRujula:1975qlm ; Liu:2019zoy . The CMI model has been successfully adopted to study the mass spectra and stability of multiquark states Luo:2017eub ; Wu:2016gas ; Wu:2018xdi ; Chen:2016ont ; Wu:2016vtq ; Liu:2016ogz ; Wu:2017weo ; Zhou:2018pcv ; Li:2018vhp ; An:2019idk ; Cheng:2020irt ; Cheng:2019obk ; Hogaasen:2013nca ; Weng:2018mmf ; Weng:2019ynva ; Weng:2020jao ; Cheng:2020nho ; An:2020jix ; Karliner:2016zzc ; Weng:2021hje ; Zhao:2014qva . The method can catch the basic features of hadron spectra, since the mass splittings between hadrons reflect the basic symmetries of their inner structures.
This paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II, the adopted CMI model and relevant parameters are introduced. We construct the flavor color spin wavefunctions for the -wave hidden-charm hexaquark system in Sec. III, and study the mass spectrum and the two-body decays through the strong interaction in Sec. IV. A short summary follows in Sec. V.
II THE Hamiltonian in the CMI model
In the CMI model, the Hamiltonian has a simple form
(1) |
where is the effective mass of the -th constituent (anti) quark, and and are Gell-Mann and Pauli matrices, respectively. For the antiquark, and . The dynamical effect of spatial wavefunctions plays an important role in the study of hadron spectrum. Chromomagnetic interaction is nonrelativistic in the Schrdinger equation in Ref. Godfrey:1985xj wherein the authors used the spatial wave functions with harmonic-oscillator expansion. The is effective coupling constant between the -th (anti) quark and -th (anti) quark
(2) |
which is directly related to the spatial wavefunctions and the constituent quark masses. We focus on ground states in -wave, and we simply suppose it does not change for various hexaquark systems.
Høgaasen et al. found out that the quark mass in bottomonium is much lighter than the one in the heavy-light system, and introduced the color interaction (the spin-independent color Coulomb-like terms in the one-gluon-exchange interactions) in Refs. Hogaasen:2013nca ; Karliner:2016zzc ; Weng:2018mmf . We also introduce a color term into our model Refs. Hogaasen:2013nca ; Weng:2018mmf
(3) |
The nonvanishing color interaction coefficient implies a change of the effective masses. We can rewrite the CMI Hamiltonian as Ref. Weng:2018mmf
(4) |
where
(5) |
To estimate the mass spectra of the hidden-charm hexaquark states, we extract the effective coupling parameters and from the conventional hadron masses Weng:2018mmf . In the present work, and are only determined by vector mesons ( and ). We present the obtained effective coupling parameters in Table 1.
182.2 | 226.7 | 262.3 | 520.0 | 166.49 | 204.2 | 241.1 | 493.3 | 767.1 |
19.1 | 13.3 | 12.2 | 3.9 | 20.5 | 14.2 | 10.3 | 6.6 | 5.3 |
III The wavefunctions
In order to calculate the CMI Hamiltonian, we need to exhaust all the possible spin and color wavefunctions of hexaquark states and combine them with the corresponding flavor wavefunctions. The constructed flavor-color-spin wavefunctions should be fully antisymmetric when exchanging identical quarks because of Pauli principle. The wavefunctions do not change with different sets of basis, and we use the basis to construct the hidden-charm hexaquarks wavefunctions.
Firstly, we discuss the flavor wavefunctions. The mass hierarchy for , and quarks is obvious and we neglect the mixing effect among the , , and pairs. Based on these, we list all the possible flavor combinations for the hidden-charm hexaquark system in Table 2.
In Table 2, the three subsystems of the first line are pure neutral particles and parity is “good” quantum number. For the six subsystems of the second line, every subsystem has a charge conjugation anti-partner, thus they have the same mass spectra, and we only need to discuss one of two relevant subsystems. In the first line of Table 2, has isospin and has isospin . In the second line, the isospin can be for , for , and 1/2 for .
System | Flavor combinations | ||||
() | () | () |
Next, we briefly introduce the color wavefunctions for all hexaquark systems. They can be deduced from the following direct product:
|
(6) |
where A (S) means totally symmetric (antisymmetric), and MS (MA) means that or is symmetric (antisymmetric). Here, the color-singlet wavefunctions for the hexaquarks are shown in Table 3. In the notation , the color1, color2, color3, and color4 stand for the color representations of , , , and , respectively.
Color wavefunctions Spin wavefunctions Spin=0: Spin=1: Spin=2: Spin=3:
Lastly, the spin wavefunctions for the hidden-charm hexaquark states are also shown in Table 3. In the notation , the spin1, spin2, spin3, spin4, and spin5 represent the spins of , , , , and the total spin, respectively.
Considering the Pauli principle, we obtain 54 types of total wavefunctions and present them in the first part of Table 4. Some wavefunctions are the eigenstates of parity like , but others are not. For the neutral states, we need do linear superposition to construct eigen wavefunctions of parity, and present them in the second part of Table 4. We introduce notations , , , and . When the two light quarks or antiquarks are antisymmetric (symmetric) in the flavor space, (), or else (). The hidden-charm hexaquark states can be categorized into 6 classes, and we present them in third part of Table 4.
All possible types of total wavefunctions for hexaquark system without parity All possible types of total wavefunctions for pure neutral hexaquark system Different classes of the hidden-charm hexaquark system , , , : , , , , : , , , , , : , , , : , , , , : , , , :
IV Numerical results and discussion
Sandwiching the CMI Hamiltonian between the two wavefunctions with the same quantum number, we obtain the Hamiltonian matrices. Based on the corresponding eigenvalues and eigenvectors, we discuss the mass gaps, stabilities, and strong decay behaviors of all the hidden-charm hexaquark states.
From the eigenvalues, we present the mass spectra in Fig. 1 (for , , and ), Fig. 2 (for and ), and Fig. 3 (for ). Moreover, we also plot the corresponding thresholds which they can decay to through quark rearrangements. In convenience, we label the spin (isospin) of the rearrangement decay channel in the superscript (subscript).

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|
(a)
|
(b) states |
![]() |
(a) states |
In addition to the mass spectra, we discuss the two body strong decay based on the obtained eigenvectors. According to Table 3 and Table 4, we can find that there are overlaps between hexaquark states and particular baryon-antibaryon states. In the configuration, the color wavefunction of the hexaquark states falls into three categories: , , and . The can easily dissociate into an S-wave baryon and S-wave antibaryon (the “OZI-superallowed” decay mode). In contrast, the and fall apart through the gluon exchange. For simplicity, we only focus on the “OZI-superallowed” decay mode.
The partial width of the two body -wave “OZI-superallowed decay” mode reads Weng:2019ynva ; Weng:2020jao ; Weng:2021hje
(7) |
where is an effective coupling constant, is the initial state mass, is the spatial momentum of the final state in the center-of-mass frame, and is overlap between the hexaquark states and the final baryon-antibaryon states. Generally, depends on the spatial wavefunctions of the initial hexaquark and final baryon-antibaryon, which are different for each decay process. In the heavy quark limit, () and () have the same spatial wavefunction. Based on these, we assume the relationships for different hidden-charm hexaquark states presented in Table 5. We find that the is of or even smaller, which means that the large partial wave decays are all suppressed. Thus we only need to consider the -wave two body decay modes. Employing the eigenvectors in Table 6, we calculate the values of for each decay process and present them in Table 7. The blank area in Tables 6 and 7 means that the hexaquark state is forbidden to decay through this channel because of the quantum number conservation. According to the relationships in Table 5 and the values of in Table 7, we can roughly estimate the relative decay widths for different two-body decay processes of a hexaquark state.
Subsystem | |
Mass Mass Mass Mass 5534 -0.993 5285 -0.991 5036 -0.989 4939 0.259 5490 0.665 -0.665 5319 -0.884 -0.306 -0.128 5025 0.909 4895 -0.764 5539 -0.983 -0.050 -0.050 5255 -0.288 0.358 0.720 5060 -0.924 -0.161 -0.161 5013 0.221 -0.015 5475 0.091 -0.664 -0.664 5233 -0.259 0.825 - 0.441 5008 0.296 -0.484 -0.484 4922 0.456 0.255 5569 0.918 0.135 -0.135 0.133 5415 0.688 0.3 0.275 0.188 5143 0.672 0.327 -0.327 0.338 4876 -0.634 -0.300 5522 -0.225 0.593 -0.593 0.248 5312 0.417 -0.116 -0.685 -0.213 5130 -0.538 0.416 -0.416 0.161 4852 -0.354 0.740 5429 0.087 0.243 -0.243 -0.882 5269 -0.307 0.805 -0.191 -0.169 4954 -0.217 -0.415 0.415 0.825 4792 0.128 -0.264 5465 0.699 0.699 5196 -0.071 0.123 -0.439 0.774 5006 0.650 0.650 4686 0.188 -0.031 5622 -0.806 -0.235 5157 0.058 -0.173 -0.145 -0.284 5217 -0.704 -0.369 4605 -0.191 0.097 5495 0.447 -0.641 5150 0.308 0.244 0.067 -0.227 5066 0.531 -0.599 4933 0.118 5435 -0.017 0.365 5366 -0.899 -0.169 4958 0.055 0.213 4842 -0.599 5242 0.191 -0.827 4797 0.674 Mass Mass Mass 5292 -0.991 5164 0.989 4940 -0.319 5329 -0.883 -0.148 -0.148 -0.132 -0.132 5250 0.749 0.187 0.377 0.252 4816 -0.019 5240 0.264 -0.645 -0.645 -0.095 -0.095 5134 -0.482 0.709 0.354 0.145 4584 -0.818 5216 -0.303 -0.013 -0.013 0.291 0.291 5116 -0.276 -0.554 0.705 -0.005 4767 0.562 5168 -0.064 -0.168 -0.168 0.535 0.535 5071 0.203 0.140 -0.013 -0.707 4649 -0.619 24 5125 -0.030 0.081 0.081 -0.006 -0.006 5051 -0.014 0.118 0.350 -0.345 5295 0.603 -0.603 0.131 -0.131 5017 0.080 0.180 0.156 -0.293 Mass 24 5200 -0.026 0.026 -0.443 0.443 5419 0.509 0.341 0.303 0.231 0.259 0.225 5192 -0.061 5155 0.218 -0.218 -0.407 0.407 5235 -0.523 0.549 -0.036 0.067 0.163 0.104 5015 0.746 5326 0.347 0.347 0.194 0.194 0.219 0.219 5185 -0.337 -0.092 0.652 0.009 -0.162 -0.039 4971 -0.359 5224 -0.578 -0.578 0.069 0.069 0.108 0.108 5120 -0.18 -0.042 -0.302 0.366 0.206 -0.011 5447 0.037 -0.023 -0.010 5134 0.066 0.066 -0.620 -0.620 0.132 0.132 5090 -0.201 -0.555 0.218 0.154 0.578 0.247 5028 0.409 -0.060 -0.009 5110 0.025 0.025 -0.157 -0.157 -0.291 -0.291 5056 0.016 0.172 0.119 -0.591 0.389 -0.102 5005 0.659 0.443 0.164 5066 0.101 0.101 -0.003 -0.003 -0.440 -0.440 5041 0.187 -0.172 -0.333 -0.129 0.246 -0.126 4970 -0.143 0.345 0.066 5421 0.433 0.346 -0.346 0.128 -0.128 0.107 -0.107 0.317 0.142 5036 -0.175 0.022 0.033 -0.189 0.299 -0.25 4943 -0.426 0.634 0.025 5398 0.558 -0.053 0.053 0.066 -0.066 0.082 -0.082 0.066 0.025 5008 0.113 0.019 0.192 0.313 0.138 -0.734 4913 0.028 -0.033 0.078 5288 -0.537 0.388 -0.388 0.088 -0.088 0.095 -0.095 0.173 0.014 4991 0.101 0.002 -0.008 -0.302 0.014 -0.052 4896 0.171 0.215 0.432 5206 0.240 0.361 -0.361 -0.131 0.131 -0.092 0.092 -0.734 -0.079 4970 0.160 -0.163 0.070 0.021 -0.108 -0.015 4870 0.097 0.009 -0.588 5153 0.118 0.090 -0.090 -0.549 0.549 -0.141 0.141 0.394 -0.131 4946 -0.168 0.165 -0.211 0.204 0.136 -0.135 4822 0.017 -0.014 -0.279 5114 -0.065 -0.057 0.057 -0.265 0.265 0.488 -0.488 -0.158 0.129 5285 0.845 0.256 0.093 4809 -0.226 0.017 -0.272 5073 0.182 -0.173 0.173 0.127 -0.127 0.063 -0.063 -0.059 -0.163 5151 0.333 -0.723 -0.049 4770 0.058 0.127 0.107 5050 -0.167 0.008 -0.008 0.109 -0.109 0.023 -0.023 -0.092 -0.259 5071 -0.003 0.287 0.244 5027 0.047 -0.124 5041 0.008 0.004 -0.004 -0.001 0.001 0.008 -0.008 0.007 -0.054 5024 0.057 0.064 -0.719 4996 -0.544 -0.224 5027 0.093 0.067 -0.067 0.111 -0.111 0.083 -0.083 0.109 -0.746 5015 0.018 -0.272 0.167 4914 -0.705 0.246 5021 -0.009 0.028 -0.028 -0.006 0.006 -0.082 0.082 0.065 -0.038 4962 0.033 0.171 -0.139 4894 0.087 0.639 19 5003 0.001 -0.019 0.019 -0.124 0.124 0.296 -0.296 -0.016 -0.291 4815 0.145 0.296 24 4987 -0.059 -0.030 0.030 0.046 -0.046 0.127 -0.127 -0.042 0.148 Mass 19 4978 0.047 0.028 -0.028 -0.002 0.002 -0.227 0.227 0.029 -0.049 5413 0.991 Mass 24 5407 -0.854 -0.094 -0.094 -0.233 -0.112 5590 -0.556 -0.295 -0.326 -0.239 -0.213 -0.199 5135 0.412 5300 -0.064 -0.052 -0.052 0.342 0.027 5432 0.642 -0.16 -0.538 -0.162 -0.109 -0.103 5128 -0.661 5235 0.323 -0.165 -0.165 -0.732 -0.137 5390 0.192 -0.776 0.326 0.149 0.015 0.033 5189 -0.337 -0.068 5131 0.094 -0.541 -0.541 0.309 -0.177 5332 0.178 0.102 0.502 -0.560 -0.408 -0.181 5138 -0.478 -0.225 5116 0.018 0.030 0.030 -0.016 -0.264 5307 -0.003 -0.202 0.184 -0.474 0.454 -0.041 5088 0.677 -0.0003 5047 -0.071 -0.202 -0.202 -0.175 0.733 5274 0.015 0.068 -0.176 -0.386 0.472 0.205 5071 0.139 -0.819 5009 0.019 -0.216 -0.216 0.092 -0.042 5245 -0.001 0.106 0.068 -0.138 -0.297 0.634 4984 0.006 -0.195 4976 0.041 -0.052 -0.052 -0.035 0.167 5244 0.199 -0.119 -0.113 -0.125 -0.112 0.129 5130 0.205 5137 0.280 -0.280 5227 -0.166 -0.298 -0.12 -0.064 -0.166 0.443 5040 0.818 5117 0.382 -0.382 5208 -0.093 0.039 -0.012 -0.091 0.260 0.182 5007 0.359 24 5084 -0.441 0.441 5183 -0.141 -0.151 0.186 0.148 0.116 -0.021 Mass 24 Mass Mass 5492 0.899 0.171 0.072 5211 -0.054 -0.069 -0.071 5456 0.843 0.314 0.155 0.187 5295 -0.16 -0.168 -0.126 0.855 5354 -0.216 0.829 0.071 5176 -0.035 0.239 -0.333 5371 -0.437 0.629 0.551 0.147 5251 0.057 -0.134 -0.214 0.123 5267 0.023 -0.199 -0.411 5356 0.113 -0.611 0.735 0.0003 5229 0.085 0.162 -0.710
Mass Mass Mass Mass 5534 69 5285 47 5036 552 4939 38 5490 124 124 5319 238 48 9 5025 301 4895 272 5539 136 1 1 5255 38.5 170 5060 206 12 12 5013 35 0.2 5475 88 88 5233 126 44 5008 70 70 4922 110 59 5569 271 10 10 12 5415 281 65 56 30 5143 235 71 71 88 4876 167 76 5522 143 143 37 5312 47 7 239 30 5130 141 109 109 19 4852 42 444 5429 252 5269 233 14 16 4954 228 4792 50 5465 53 53 5196 209 5006 123 123 4686 0.5 5622 325 44 5157 11 5217 337 121 4605 3 5495 219 5150 2 5066 77 226 4933 10 5435 46 5366 377 21 4958 16 4842 178 5242 336 4797 166 Mass Mass Mass 5292 51.2 5164 28.4 4940 95 5329 247 12 12 13 13 5250 265 22 90 52 4816 0.3 5240 88 88 5 5 5134 149 39 13 4584 108 5216 44 44 5116 64 114 0.01 4767 213 5168 107 107 5071 231 4649 160 24 5125 0 0 5051 48 5295 317 318 12 12 5017 24 Mass 24 5200 93 93 5419 213 106 85 57 68 57 5192 3 5155 54 54 5235 118 179 1 4 19 10 5015 252 5326 63 63 28 28 41 41 5185 27 4 204 0.1 16 1 4971 40 5224 17 17 3 3 8 8 5120 0.4 23 78 20 0.1 5447 2 1 0.1 5134 88 88 9 9 5090 12 128 40 5028 82 2 0.1 5110 35 35 5056 146 38 6 5005 185 116 21 5066 44 44 5041 6 9 9 4970 6 61 3 5421 111 88 88 15 15 12 12 84 23 5036 13 9 33 4943 30 177 0.4 5398 167 2 2 4 4 7 7 4 1 5008 23 249 4913 0.4 4 5288 63 63 6 6 7 7 18 0.2 4991 9 1 4896 13 109 5206 9 9 6 6 196 5 4970 0.1 4870 0.01 182 5153 96 96 11 11 13 4946 4 4822 31 5114 4 4 100 100 11 5285 402 53 8 4809 27 5073 1 1 16 5151 288 2 4770 2 5050 0 0 36 5071 26 36 5027 1 13 5041 2 5024 261 4996 169 38 5027 265 5015 13 4914 173 38 5021 1 4962 6 4894 2 237 19 5003 35 4815 33 24 4987 8 Mass 19 4978 1 5413 68 Mass 24 5407 407 9 9 44 14 5590 216 71 88 53 45 43 5135 78 5300 1 2 2 72 1 5432 98 13 144 17 9 9 5128 191 5235 19 19 245 16 5390 212 39 13 0.2 1 5189 67 3 5131 136 136 22 5332 124 84 22 5138 106 32 5116 0.5 0.5 47 5307 68 91 1 5088 136 0.00005 5047 0.5 0.5 283 5274 9 72 23 5071 4 318 5009 3 3 1 5245 15 185 4984 3 4976 9 5244 2 8 5130 26 5137 38 38 5227 80 5040 256 5117 62 62 5208 11 5007 33 24 5084 62 62 5183 0.1 Mass 24 Mass Mass 5492 1 0.2 0.1 5211 2 5456 249 55 13 27 5295 294 5354 319 4 5176 21 5371 108 86 13 5251 3 5267 88 5356 70 111 0 5229 209
IV.1 The subsystem
Firstly, we discuss the subsystem based on Fig. 1 (a). They have the same mass range as the excited states of . The subsystem can be divided into three situations: , , and .
As for states, they are antiparticles of the states, thus they have the same mass spectra. We find no relative “stable” states for the system, that is, all of them can decay in -wave through strong interaction.
There are some hexaquark states which have the same quantum numbers among , and . For example, both and have some states with the total isospin . The mass spectrum of these states should have been mixed, but all of transition matrix elements of CMI Hamiltonian are zero and thus they cannot be mixed under the CMI model. According to Fig. 1 (a), the masses of states are usually larger than those of states which are generally larger than those of states. In the conventional baryon sectors, the one is usually heavier than the one, for example, see [ vs ] and [ vs ]. In our work, the wave functions of hexaquark states can be regarded as “baryon antibaryon” configuration. These two factors may result into that the hexaquark with larger isospin is heavier than that with smaller isospin. The similar results can be found in Refs. Chen:2016ont ; Weng:2018mmf ; Weng:2019ynva .
The total isospin of states can be , 1, and 0. Note that the symmetry property of is determined from and . Thus, the states are degenerate for the total isospin of , , and in the CMI model.
There are some neutral states with exotic quantum numbers , , and which the traditional mesons () cannot have. These exotic quantum number can help identify hidden-charm hexaquark states.
The notation is for a hexaquark state with mass around 5036 MeV and . According to the Table 6, the overlap between and states is nearly 1, and thus the hexaquark is mainly made of a baryon and an antibaryon. It may behave like the ordinary scattering state if the inner interaction is not strong, but could also be a resonance or bound state dynamically generated by the baryon and antibaryon. The , , and others have similar situations. These kinds of hexaquarks deserve a more careful study.
The subsystem has one rearrangement decay mode: . The hexaquark states can decay to and , but the () states can only decay into () due to the angular momentum conservation. The hexaquarks have only one decay channel while the hexaquark states decay to in the “OZI-superallowed” decay mode.
One can extract the decay width information from Table 7. The and decay to all possible channel, but their partial width ratios are different. For the ,
(8) |
and for ·
(9) |
where is short for the mode with .
IV.2 The subsystem
The states can be considered as pure neutral particles. Some of them have normal quantum numbers , , , , and , but others carry exotic quantum numbers , , and . Meanwhile, all of these have many different rearrangement decay channels according to Fig. 1 (b) and thus their widths are relative broad.
For the two-body strong decay behaviors of the subsystem, the heaviest has two decay modes,
(10) |
and its dominant decay mode is . The state can decay through all possible baryon-antibaryon channels, and
(11) |
where the means which is antisymmetric under the -parity transformation. Moreover, for the states and , their masses are similar and they can only decay through mode. and have similar masses but the former can decay into while the latter can decay through in -wave.
The rest of hexaquark states are below the baryon-antibaryon decay channels. Therefore, their mainly rearrangement decay channels should be meson-meson-meson decay channels.
IV.3 The subsystem
According to Fig. 1 (c), we discuss the mass spectra and decay behaviour of subsystem. For the states, they are explicitly exotic states. There are still no relative stable states in subsystem.
For the states, they have only two channels: and . The two states and can be distinguished by their respective decay modes. The can dissociate into while can decay into in -wave.
There are four different decay channels for the states: , , , and . From Table 7, for state,
(12) |
and for the state
(13) |
IV.4 The subsystem
We discuss the mass spectra and decay behaviors of subsystem based on Fig. 2 (a). The states are antiparticles of the states, and thus they have the same mass spectra.
The subsystem can be divided into two situations: and . For the states, the mass spectra are identical for total isospin of and in CMI model similar to subsystem. The states with are explicitly exotic and thus easily identifiable as candidates for the hidden-charm hexaquark state.
From Fig. 2 (a), we find the lowest , , , and states are relatively stable states, and especially the is below all the thresholds for rearrangement decay channels. Other three states can still decay via -wave strong interaction. For example, the can decay into final states via -wave.
From Table 7, there are 6 and 3 possible baryon-antibaryon channels for the and subsystems, respectively. The and are accidentally degenerate, but the state can decay into , , , and while the state can only decay through , and channels. Similarly, can only decay through mode, but can only decay into , and modes. We can distinguish and by partial decay width ratios since for the former,
(14) |
and for the latter,
(15) |
IV.5 The subsystem
Here, we discuss the subsystem based on Fig. 2 (b). The subsystem is also a pure neutral subsystem, thus parity and parity are good quantum numbers. Since there is no constraint from the Pauli principle for subsystem, the values of , , , and from Table 4 are all 1 and the obtained mass spectra is more complicated than other subsystems. There are no relative stable states for the subsystem.
Similar to the states, the mass spectra of states are identical for total isospin of and in CMI model. From Fig. 2 (b), we find nine good exotic states candidates for quantum numbers .
The mass of is very closed to , and they all can decay into . However, the has others decay channels. From Table 7, we obtain for
(16) |
where and represent and respectively.
IV.6 The subsystem
Lastly, we discuss the mass spectra and decay behaviour of subsystem based on the Fig. 3 (a). The states are antiparticles of the states, and thus they have the same mass spectra. The restrictions from Pauli principle for the states are the same as the states, and therefore the numbers of their states are equal.
From Fig. 3 (a), we easily find that there are no relative stable states. The states are higher than many different rearrangement decay channels. Therefore, they would have a relative wide width. In conclusion, we do not suggest that the experimentalists foremost find these states.
The reference baryon-antibaryon systems for the states are the , , , , , and . The mass of is close to that of . For state, it can decay through , , and channels. But can decay into and channels. Then we consider and , and both of them can decay through and channels in -wave. From Table 7, for ,
(17) |
and for ,
(18) |
V SUMMARY
Up to now, more and more hidden-charm tetraquark states and pentaquark states have been discovered and confirmed by different experiments. These give us a significant confidence to the existence of hidden-charm hexaquark states. Thus, we studied systemically the mass spectra, stability, and strong decay behaviors of hidden-charm hexaquark states in the framework of the CMI model.
States | Masses | States | Masses | ||
3815 | 3578 | ||||
4005 | 3670 | ||||
4443 | 4090 | ||||
4682 | |||||
4794 | 3887 | ||||
4576 |
Firstly, we introduce the CMI model and extract the corresponding coupling constants from traditional hadrons. Next, we construct the flavor color spin wavefunctions based on the SU(3) and SU(2) symmetry. Meanwhile, we require the wavefunction to obey Pauli Principle. After that, we systemically calculate the mass spectra, corresponding overlap, and the values of . Lastly, we specifically discuss the stability, the possible quark rearrangement decay channels, and the relative decay width ratios.
For , , and subsystems, they are pure neutral particles (except subsystem), and parity and parity both are good quantum numbers. According to the mass spectra, we find that the lower isospin quantum number, the more compact hexaquark states. Here, the states are good exotic states candidates, and especially the states which even the -wave tetraquark states cannot carry.
We list some possible stable hexaquark states in Table 8. We find ten relative stable states, which are below all allowed rearrangement decay channels. These states belong to the subsystem, subsystem and subsystem respectively. We think the and states are better stable candidates which could be first searched for in experiments.
Scen.1 | Scen.2 | Scen.1 | Scen.2 |
3600 | 3201 | 4836 | 4670 |
3736 | 3443 | 4940 | 4871 |
4197 | 3960 | 5100 | 5068 |
4234 | 4053 | 5175 | 5152 |
4325 | 4260 | 5275 | 5258 |
4432 | 4437 | 5287 | 5274 |
4548 | 4520 | 5329 | 5298 |
4584 | 4588 | 5429 | 5434 |
4816 | 4835 | 5522 | 5556 |
4940 | 5003 | 5569 | 5592 |
In order to check the uncertainty of our framework, we also determine the and with the masses of pseudoscalar mesons. Since the spontaneously breaking of vacuum symmetry strongly affects the properties of these pseudoscalar mesons, the parameters of and are not the same as those obtained with the vector mesons. For example, and become 29.87 MeV and 153.99 MeV in the new scenario, respectively. However, the difference between the hexquark masses of the two scenarios can be roughly used to estimate the uncertainly of our approach. We give the comparison of the and systems with in Table 9. Scen.1 (Scen.2) denotes the results calculated by using the parameters obtained with the vector (pseudoscalar) mesons. Firstly, one notices that the ground states differ largest from the table. The heavier the state is, the smaller the difference between the two scenarios is. These may be resulted from that the new becomes larger while the new becomes smaller. Secondly, the mass of the ground state with changes about 399 MeV while that for the case only varies about 166 MeV. That is, the uncertainty reduces when the number of quark in hexaquark states decreases, which is because the mass difference between and mesons is much larger than those between and mesons.
In summary, we give a preliminary study about the mass spectra of hidden-charm hexaquark states. In addition to the CMI model, other non-perturbative QCD methods can also help us to understand more properties of the hexaquark states in detail such as QCD sum rule, effective fields theories and lattice QCD simulations. We hope that our study may inspire theorists and experimentalists to pay attention to these hidden-charm hexaquark states.
VI Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the China National Funds for Distinguished Young Scientists under Grant No. 11825503, National Key Research and Development Program of China under Contract No. 2020YFA0406400, the 111 Project under Grant No. B20063, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 12047501. This project is also supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants No. 12175091, and 11965016, CAS Interdisciplinary Innovation Team, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grants No. lzujbky-2021-sp24.
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