To bind or not to bind: The H-dibaryon in light of chiral effective field theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the binding energy of the H-dibaryon depends on quark masses using chiral effective field theory, highlighting the importance of SU(3) breaking effects and the dominant Xi-N component.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the quark mass dependence of the H-dibaryon and emphasizes the significance of SU(3) breaking effects in lattice QCD simulations.

Findings

SU(3) breaking effects significantly impact the H-dibaryon binding energy.

The dominant component of the H-dibaryon is Xi-N rather than Lambda-Lambda.

Proper incorporation of threshold differences is crucial for future lattice studies.

Abstract

We analyse the quark mass dependence of the binding energy of the H-dibaryon in the framework of chiral effective field theory. We show that the SU(3) breaking effects induced by the differences of the pertinent two-baryon thresholds (Lambda-Lambda, Xi-N, Sigma-Sigma) have a very pronounced impact that need to be incorporated properly in future lattice QCD simulations. We also point out that if the H-dibaryon is a two-baryon bound state, its dominant component is Xi-N rather than Lambda-Lambda, which is a consequence of the approximate SU(3) flavor symmetry of the two-baryon interactions.