Doubly-hidden scalar heavy molecules and tetraquarks states from QCD at NLO

TL;DR

This paper uses advanced QCD sum rule techniques at NLO to estimate masses of heavy tetraquarks and molecules, providing theoretical support for recent LHCb exotic hadron discoveries.

Contribution

It presents the first NLO QCD sum rule analysis of doubly-hidden scalar heavy tetraquarks and molecules, improving previous LO estimates and addressing methodological criticisms.

Findings

LHCb structures can be explained by specific heavy molecule and tetraquark states.

NLO corrections significantly refine mass predictions for heavy tetraquarks.

Mass estimates for beauty states are above relevant meson thresholds.

Abstract

Alerted by the recent LHCb discovery of exotic hadrons in the range (6.2 -- 6.9) GeV, we present new results for the doubly-hidden scalar heavy $(\bar QQ) (Q\bar Q)$ charm and beauty molecules using the inverse Laplace transform sum rule (LSR) within stability criteria and including the Next-to-Leading Order (NLO) factorized perturbative and $\langle G^3\rangle$ gluon condensate corrections. We also critically revisit and improve existing Lowest Order (LO) QCD spectral sum rules (QSSR) estimates of the $({ \bar Q \bar Q})(QQ)$ tetraquarks analogous states. In the example of the anti-scalar-scalar molecule, we separate explicitly the contributions of the factorized and non-factorized contributions to LO of perturbative QCD and to the $\langle\alpha_sG^2\rangle$ gluon condensate contributions in order to disprove some criticisms on the (mis)uses of the sum rules for four-quark currents. We also re-emphasize the importance to include PT radiative corrections for heavy quark sum rules in order to justify the (ad hoc) definition and value of the heavy quark mass used frequently at LO in the literature. Our LSR results for tetraquark masses summarized in Table II are compared with the ones from ratio of moments (MOM) at NLO and results from LSR and ratios of MOM at LO (Table IV). The LHCb broad structure around (6.2 --6.7) GeV can be described by the $\overline{\eta}_{c}{\eta}_{c}$, $\overline{J/\psi}{J/\psi}$ and $\overline{\chi}_{c1}{\chi}_{c1}$ molecules or/and their analogue tetraquark scalar-scalar, axial-axial and vector-vector lowest mass ground states. The peak at (6.8--6.9) GeV can be likely due to a $\overline{\chi}_{c0}{\chi}_{c0}$ molecule or/and a pseudoscalar-pseudoscalar tetraquark state. Similar analysis is done for the scalar beauty states whose masses are found to be above the $\overline\eta_b\eta_b$ and $\overline\Upsilon(1S)\Upsilon(1S)$ thresholds.