Quarkonium-Nucleus Bound States from Lattice QCD

TL;DR

This study uses lattice QCD to explore the interactions between quarkonium states and light nuclei, revealing potential binding energies and the nature of these exotic systems.

Contribution

First lattice QCD calculations of strange and charm quarkonia interactions with light nuclei, providing insights into their binding energies and interaction mechanisms.

Findings

Strangeonium and charmonium can form relatively deeply bound states with light nuclei.

Extrapolated binding energy of charmonium to nuclear matter is less than 40 MeV.

Results suggest multi-gluon exchanges dominate quarkonium-nucleus interactions.

Abstract

Quarkonium-nucleus systems are composed of two interacting hadronic states without common valence quarks, which interact primarily through multi-gluon exchanges, realizing a color van der Waals force. We present lattice QCD calculations of the interactions of strange and charm quarkonia with light nuclei. Both the strangeonium-nucleus and charmonium-nucleus systems are found to be relatively deeply bound when the masses of the three light quarks are set equal to that of the physical strange quark. Extrapolation of these results to the physical light-quark masses suggests that the binding energy of charmonium to nuclear matter is B < 40 MeV.