Pointlike Baryons?

TL;DR

This paper discusses the near-threshold behavior of baryon-antibaryon production in e+e- collisions, highlighting evidence for point-like baryons and Coulomb interactions influencing cross sections, supported by recent experimental data.

Contribution

It provides new insights into baryon form factors at threshold, suggesting point-like behavior for certain baryons and interpreting threshold cross sections through Coulomb interactions and U-spin symmetry.

Findings

e+e- -> p-pbar cross section dominated by Coulomb final state interactions

Lambda_c form factor at threshold approximately equal to 1

Non-vanishing strange baryon cross sections explained by Coulomb effects

Abstract

A peculiar feature, observed in the BaBar data on e+e- -> baryon-antibaryon cross sections, is the non-vanishing cross section at threshold for all these processes. This is the expectation due to the Coulomb enhancement factor acting on a charged fermion pair. Remarkably, in the case of e+e- -> p-pbar it is found that Coulomb final state interactions largely dominate the cross section at threshold and it turns out a form factor |G(4Mp^2)|~1, as a point-like fermion. Also in the case of e+e- -> Lambda_c-antiLambda_c, as recently measured by Belle for the first time, a point-like behavior is suggested for the charmed charged baryon, being the Lambda_c form factor at threshold |G|~1, even if within a large error. In the case of neutral strange baryons the non-vanishing cross section at threshold is interpreted as a remnant of quark pair Coulomb interaction before the hadronization, taking into account the asymmetry between attractive and repulsive Coulomb factors. Besides strange baryon cross sections are successfully compared to U-spin invariance relationships.