In this paper we present in greater detail previous work on the Born-Oppenheimer approximation to treat the hydrogen bond of QCD, and add a similar treatment of doubly heavy baryons. Doubly heavy exotic resonances X and Z can be described as color mo
lecules of two-quark lumps, the analogue of the H_2 molecule, and doubly heavy baryons as the analog of the H_2^+ ion, except that the two heavy quarks attract each other. We compare our results with constituent quark model and lattice QCD calculations and find further evidence in support of this upgraded picture of compact tetraquarks and baryons.
Using the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, we show that exotic resonances, X and Z, may emerge as QCD molecular objects made of colored two-quark lumps, states with heavy-light diquarks spatially separated from antidiquarks. With the same method we co
nfirm that doubly heavy tetraquarks are stable against strong decays. Tetraquarks described here provide a new picture of exotic hadrons, as formed by the QCD analog of the hydrogen bond of molecular physics.
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.
We suggest that the J/psi phi structures observed by LHCb can be fitted in two tetraquak multiplets, the S-wave ground state and the first radial excitation, with composition [cs][cbar sbar]. When compared to the previously identified [cq][cbar qbar]
multiplet, the observed masses agree with what expected for a multiplet with q -->s. We propose the X(4274), fitted by LHCb with a single 1^++ resonance, to correspond rather to two, almost degenerate, unresolved lines with J^PC = 0^++, 2^++. Masses of missing particles in the 1S and 2S multiplets are predicted.
Diquarks are found to have the right degrees of freedom to describe the tetraquark poles in hidden-charm to open-charm meson-meson amplitudes. Compact tetraquarks result as intermediate states in non-planar diagrams of the 1/N expansion and the corre
sponding resonances are narrower than what estimated before. The proximity of tetraquarks to meson-thresholds has an apparent role in this analysis and, in the language of meson molecules, an halving rule in the counting of states is obtained.
Pentaquarks and dibaryons are natural possibilities if diquarks are used as the building blocks to assemble hadrons. In this short note, motivated by the very recent discovery of two pentaquark states, we highlight some possible channels to search for dibaryons in Lambda_b(5620) decays.
Recent results by BELLE and BaBar point to the existence of a second X particle decaying in D^0 D^0bar pi^0, a few MeV above the X(3872). We identify the two X states with the neutral particles predicted by the 4-quark model and show that production
and decays are consistent with this assignement. We consider the yet-to-be-observed charged partners and give new hints on how to look for them.
We identify the newly found Z(4433) with the first radial excitation of the tetraquark basic supermultiplet to which X(3872) and X(3876) belong. Experimental predictions following from this hypothesis are spelled out.
We update our former analysis of the Nuclear Modification Factors (NMF) for different hadron species at RHIC and LHC. This update is motivated by the new experimental data from STAR which presents differences with the preliminary data used to fix som
e of the parameters in our model. The main change is the use of AKK fragmentation functions for the hard part of the spectrum and minor adjustments of the coalescence (soft) contribution. We confirm that observation of the NMF for the f_0 meson can shed light on its quark composition.
