We investigate the anomalous triangle singularity (ATS) and its possible manifestations in various processes. We show that the ATS should have important impact on our understanding of the nature of some newly observed threshold states. Discussions on how to distinguish the ATS phenomena from genuine dynamic pole structures are presented.
The spectrum of hadrons is the manifestation of color confinement of quantum chromodynamics. Hadronic resonances correspond to poles of the S-matrix. Since 2003, lots of new hadron resonant structures were discovered in the mass regions from light mesons to hadrons containing a pair of a heavy quark and an antiquark. Many of them are candidates of exotic hadrons, and they are usually observed as peaks in invariant mass distributions. However, the S-matrix also has kinematical singularities due to the on-shellness of intermediate particles for a process, such as two-body thresholds and triangle singularities, and they can produce peaks as well. On the one hand, such singularities may be misidentified as resonances; on the other hand, they can be used as tools for precision measurements. In this paper, we review the threshold cusps and various triangle singularities in hadronic reactions, paying attention to their manifestations in phenomena related to exotic hadron candidates.
We investigate the reaction $pi^- p to pi^- J/psi p$ via the open-charm hadron rescattering diagrams. Due to the presence of the triangle singularity (TS) in the rescattering amplitudes, the TS peaks can simulate the pentaquark-like resonances arising in the $J/psi p$ invariant mass distributions, which may bring ambiguities on our understanding of the nature of the exotic states. Searching for the heavy pentaquark in different processes may help us to clarify the ambiguities, because of the highly process-dependent characteristic of the TS mechanism.
A resonance-like structure as narrow as 10 MeV is observed in the $K^-p$ invariant mass distributions in $Lambda_c^+to p K^- pi^+$ at Belle. Based on the large data sample of about 1.5 million events and the small bin width of just 1 MeV for the $K^-p$ invariant mass spectrum, the narrow peak is found precisely lying at the $Lambdaeta$ threshold. While lacking evidence for a quark model state with such a narrow width at this mass region, we find that this narrow structure can be naturally identified as a threshold cusp but enhanced by the nearby triangle singularity via the $Lambda$-$a_0(980)^+$ or $eta$-$Sigma(1660)^+$ rescatterings.
We investigate the processes $e^+e^-$$to$$gamma J/psiphi$, $gamma J/psiomega$ and $pi^0 J/psieta$ to search for the charmnium-like states with hidden $sbar{s}$, such as $Y(4140)$, $Y(4274)$, $X(4350)$ and $X(3915)$. These processes will receive contributions from the charmed-strange meson rescatterings. When the center-of-mass energies of the $e^+e^-$ scatterings are taken around the $D_{s0}(2317)D_s^{*}$, $D_{s1}(2460)D_s$ or $D_{s1}(2460)D_s^{*}$ threshold, the anomalous triangle singularities can be present in the rescattering amplitudes, which implies a non-resonance explanation about the resonance-like structures. The positions of the anomalous triangle singularities are sensitive to the kinematics, which offers us a criterion to distinguish the kinematic singularities from genuine particles.
Just as Quantum Electrodynamics describes how electrons are bound in atoms by the electromagnetic force, mediated by exchange of photons, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) describes how quarks are bound inside hadrons by the strong force, mediated by exchange of gluons. At face value, QCD allows hadrons constructed from increasingly many quarks to exist, just as atoms with increasing numbers of electrons exist, yet such complex constructions seemed, until recently, to not be present in nature. In what follows we describe advances in the spectroscopy of mesons that are refining our understanding of the rules for building hadrons from QCD.