Threshold effects in hadron spectrum: a new spectroscopy?

TL;DR

This paper reviews meson-meson molecular states near thresholds using a constrained non-relativistic quark model, successfully explaining new hadronic states like X(3872) and charm-strange mesons.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a unified constituent quark model can describe both traditional heavy mesons and newly observed exotic states near thresholds.

Findings

The model reproduces properties of X(3872) as a mixture of $c\bar c$ and $D\bar D^*$.

It accurately describes the spectrum of P-wave charm-strange mesons with meson-meson structures.

The approach successfully accounts for many recently reported exotic states.

Abstract

The exploration of energies above the open-flavor threshold in the meson spectra has led to the appearance of unexpected states difficult to accommodate in the naive picture of a bound state of a quark and an antiquark. Many of such states are located close to meson-meson thresholds, which suggests that molecular structures may be a relevant component in the total wave function of such resonances. In this work, the state of meson-meson molecules calculations is reviewed, using a non-relativistic constituent quark model that has been applied to a wide range of hadronic observables, and therefore all model parameters are completely constrained. The model has been able to reproduce, among others, the properties of the X(3872), described as a mixture of $c\bar c$ and $D\bar D^\ast$ states, or the spectrum of the P-wave charm-strange mesons, which are well reproduced only if $DK$ and $D^\ast K$ structures are taken into account. We show that such constituent quark model, which is able to describe the ordinary heavy meson spectra, is also capable of providing a good description of many new states recently reported.