Triply-heavy tetraquarks in an extended relativized quark model

TL;DR

This study uses an extended relativized quark model to systematically analyze triply-heavy tetraquarks, finding they are unstable against decay into mesons and exhibit patterns consistent with flavor and heavy quark symmetries.

Contribution

The paper introduces a comprehensive relativized quark model calculation for triply-heavy tetraquarks, including various interactions and relativistic effects, providing detailed mass spectra and decay insights.

Findings

All triply-heavy tetraquarks are above meson-meson thresholds and are unstable.

Mass splittings are influenced by Coulomb, confining, and spin-spin interactions.

Mass spectra exhibit SU(3) flavor and heavy quark symmetry patterns.

Abstract

In this paper, we adopt an extended relativized quark model to investigate the triply-heavy tetrquarks systematically. The mass spectra are obtained by solving the four-body relativized Hamiltonian including the Coulomb potential, confining potential, spin-spin interactions, and relativistic corrections. We find that all of the triply-heavy tetraquarks lie above the corresponding meson-meson thresholds, and thus no stable one exists. In particular, besides the spin-spin interactions, the Coulomb and confining potentials also contribute to the mass splittings in the $cb\bar c \bar q$ and $cb\bar b \bar q$ systems. Moreover, the whole mass spectra for triply heavy tetraquarks show quite similar patterns, which preserve the light flavor SU(3) symmetry and heavy quark symmetry well. Through the fall-apart mechanism, the triply-heavy tetraquarks may easily decay into the heavy quarkonium plus heavy-light mesons, which are good candidates for investigation in future experiments.