Eur. Phys. J. C (2008) 54: 259-265
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0516-z

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Charmed exotics in heavy ion collisions

¹ Institute of Physics and Applied Physics, Yonsei University, Seoul, 120-749, South Korea
² Cyclotron Institute and Physics Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

^* e-mail: yasui@phya.yonsei.ac.kr

Received: 13 July 2007
Revised: 20 September 2007
Published online: 24 January 2008

Abstract

Based on the color–spin interaction in diquarks, we argue that charmed multiquark hadrons are likely to exist. Because of the appreciable number of charm quarks produced in central nucleus–nucleus collisions at ultrarelativistic energies, the production of charmed multiquark hadrons is expected to be enhanced in these collisions. Using both the quark coalescence model and the statistical hadronization model, we estimate the yield of charmed tetraquark mesons, T_cc, and pentaquark baryons, Θ_cs, in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. We further discuss the decay modes of these charmed exotic hadrons in order to facilitate their detections in experiments.