Baryon resonances and strong decays

TL;DR

This paper reviews the status of constituent quark models in describing baryon resonances and their strong decays, highlighting recent covariant calculations that underpredict experimental decay widths and discussing implications for resonance classification.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of recent covariant quark model calculations for baryon decay modes and discusses their impact on understanding baryon resonance classifications.

Findings

Covariant quark models underpredict decay widths

Recent calculations cover pi, eta, and K decay modes

Implications for baryon resonance classification

Abstract

Constituent quark models provide a reasonable description of the baryon mass spectra. However, even in the light- and strange-flavor sectors several intriguing shortcomings remain. Especially with regard to strong decays of baryon resonances no consistent picture has so far emerged, and the existing experimental data cannot be explained in a satisfactory manner. Recently first covariant calculations with modern constituent quark models have become available for all pi, eta, and K decay modes of the low-lying light and strange baryons. They generally produced a remarkable underestimation of the experimental data for partial decay widths. We summarize the main results and discuss their impact on the classification of baryon resonances into flavor multiplets. These findings are of particular relevance for future efforts in the experimental investigation of baryon resonances.