No Arabic abstract
Multiquark resonances are undoubtedly experimentally observed. The number of states and the amount of details on their properties has been growing over the years. It is very recent the discovery of two pentaquarks and the confirmation of four tetraquarks, two of which had not been observed before. We mainly review the theoretical understanding of this sector of particle physics phenomenology and present some considerations attempting a coherent description of the so called X and Z resonances. The prominent problems plaguing theoretical models, like the absence of selection rules limiting the number of states predicted, motivate new directions in model building. Data are reviewed going through all of the observed resonances with particular attention to their common features and the purpose of providing a starting point to further research.
We introduce the hypothesis that diquarks and antidiquarks in tetraquarks are separated by a potential barrier. We show that this notion can answer satisfactorily long standing questions challenging the diquark-antidiquark model of exotic resonances. The tetraquark description of X and Z resonances is shown to be compatible with present limits on the non-observation of charged partners X^+-, of the X(3872) and the absence of a hyperfine splitting between two different neutral states. In the same picture, Z_c and Z_b particles are expected to form complete isospin triplets plus singlets. It is also explained why the decay rate into final states including quarkonia are suppressed with respect to those having open charm/beauty states.
Why do we see certain types of strongly interacting elementary particles and not others? This question was posed over 50 years ago in the context of the quark model. M. Gell-Mann and G. Zweig proposed that the known mesons were $q bar q$ and baryons $qqq$, with quarks known at the time $u$ (up), $d$ (down), and $s$ (strange) having charges (2/3,-1/3,-1/3). Mesons and baryons would then have integral charges. Mesons such as $qq bar q bar q$ and baryons such as $qqqq bar q$ would also have integral charges. Why werent they seen? They have now been seen, but only with additional heavy quarks and under conditions which tell us a lot about the strong interactions and how they manifest themselves. The present article describes recent progress in our understanding of such exotic mesons and baryons.
A number of candidate multiquark hadrons, i.e., particle resonances with substructures that are more complex than the quark-antiquark mesons and three-quark baryons that are prescribed in the textbooks, have recently been observed. In this talk I present: some recent preliminary BESIII results on the near-threshold behavior of sigma(e+e- --> Lambda Lambda-bar) that may or may not be related to multiquark mesons in the light- and strange-quark sectors; results from Belle and LHCb on the electrically charged, charmoniumlike Z(4430)^+ --> pi^+ psi resonance that necessarily has a four-quark substructure; and the recent LHCb discovery of the P_c(4380) and P_c(4450) hidden-charm resonances seen as a complex structure in the J/psi p invariant mass distribution for Lambda_b --> K^-J/psi p decays and necessarily have a five-quark substructure and are, therefore, prominent candidates for pentaquark baryons.
By assuming SU(6)_cs symmetry for pentaquark decays one finds a selection rule, which strongly reduces the number of states able to decay into a baryon and a meson final state and allows an intriguing identification for the Theta^+ particle recently discovered with the prediction of a narrow width.
Exotic charmonium and bottonomium resonances recently discovered are discussed and interpreted as diquark-antidiquark states containing a pair of charm quarks and a pair of light, up and down, quarks. Successes, shortcomings and predictions of the model are illustrated.