Tetraquark mixing framework for isoscalar resonances in light mesons

TL;DR

This paper extends a tetraquark mixing framework to isoscalar light mesons, explaining their mass spectrum and decay modes through spin configuration and flavor mixing, aligning well with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces an extended tetraquark mixing model for isoscalar mesons, incorporating spin and flavor mixing to explain their properties and mass spectrum.

Findings

The model reproduces the mass splitting of isoscalar resonances.

It explains the decay modes consistent with experimental observations.

The framework accounts for flavor mixing via the OZI rule.

Abstract

Recently, a tetraquark mixing framework has been proposed for light mesons and applied more or less successfully to the isovector resonances, $a_0(980), a_0(1450)$, as well as to the isodoublet resonances, $K^*_0(800), K^*_0(1430)$. In this work, we present a more extensive view on the mixing framework and extend this to the isoscalar resonances, $f_0 (500)$, $f_0(980)$, $f_0 (1370)$, $f_0(1500)$. Tetraquarks in this framework can have two spin configurations containing either spin-0 diquark or spin-1 diquark and each configuration forms a nonet in flavor space. The two spin configurations are found to mix strongly through the color-spin interactions. Their mixtures, which diagonalize the hyperfine masses, can generate the physical resonances constituting the two nonets, which, in fact, coincide roughly with the experimental observation. We identify that $f_0 (500)$, $f_0(980)$ are the isoscalar members in the light nonet, and $f_0 (1370)$, $f_0(1500)$ are the similar members in the heavy nonet. This means that the spin configuration mixing, as it relates the corresponding members in the two nonets, can generate $f_0 (500), f_0 (1370)$ among the members in light mass, and $f_0(980), f_0(1500)$ in heavy mass. The complication arises because the isoscalar members of each nonet are subject to an additional flavor mixing known as OZI rule so that $f_0 (500), f_0 (980)$, and similarly $f_0 (1370), f_0 (1500)$, are the mixture of two isoscalar members belonging to an octet and a singlet in SU$_f$(3). The tetraquark mixing framework including the flavor mixing is tested for the isoscalar resonances in terms of the mass splitting and the fall-apart decay modes.