Pentaquarks from intrinsic charms in $\Lambda_b$ decays

TL;DR

This paper investigates the origin of pentaquark states in $\Lambda_b$ decays, proposing they mainly come from intrinsic charm components in the baryon, and predicts related observables to match experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism for pentaquark production via intrinsic charm in $\Lambda_b$ decays, challenging conventional explanations.

Findings

Pentaquark states ${ m P}_{c1}$ and ${ m P}_{c2}$ are consistent with five-quark configurations.

Predicted branching ratio ratio is approximately 0.8 with small uncertainties.

Calculated CP asymmetries align with observed data, supporting the intrinsic charm hypothesis.

Abstract

We study the three-body $\Lambda_b$ decays of $\Lambda_b\to J/\psi pM$ with $M=K^-$ and $\pi^-$. The two new states ${\cal P}_{c1}\equiv {\cal P}_c(4380)^+$ and ${\cal P}_{c2}\equiv {\cal P}_c(4450)^+$ observed recently as the resonances in the $J/\psi p$ invariant mass spectrum of $\Lambda_b\to J/\psi p K^-$ can be identified to consist of five quarks, $uudc\bar c$, being consistent with the existence of the pentaquark states. We argue that, in the doubly charmful $\Lambda_b$ decays of $\Lambda_b\to J/\psi pK^-$ through $b\to c\bar c s$, apart from those through the non-resonant $\Lambda_b\to pK^-$ and resonant $\Lambda_b\to \Lambda^*\to pK^-$ transitions, the third contribution with the non-factorizable effects is not the dominant part for the resonant $\Lambda_b\to K^-{\cal P}_{c1,c2}, {\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to J/\psi p$ processes, such that we propose that the ${\cal P}_{c1,c2}$ productions are mainly from the charmless $\Lambda_b$ decays through $b\to \bar u u s$, in which the $c\bar c$ content in ${\cal P}_{c1,c2}$ arises from the intrinsic charms within the $\Lambda_b$ baryon. We hence predict the observables related to the branching ratios and the direct CP violating asymmetries to be ${\cal B}(\Lambda_b\to \pi^-({\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to) J/\psi p)/{\cal B}(\Lambda_b\to K^-({\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to) J/\psi p)=0.8\pm 0.1$, ${\cal A}_{CP}(\Lambda_b\to \pi^-({\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to)J/\psi p)=(-3.9\pm 0.2)\%$, and ${\cal A}_{CP}(\Lambda_b\to K^-({\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to)J/\psi p)=(5.8\pm 0.2)\%$, which can alleviate the inconsistency between the theoretical expectations from the three contributions in the doubly charmful $\Lambda_b$ decays and the observed data.