Kaon spectrum revisited

TL;DR

This paper predicts the excited kaon spectrum using a constituent quark model to support upcoming high-precision experimental measurements at CERN, aiding the identification of conventional and exotic states.

Contribution

It applies a well-constrained constituent quark model to compute the excited kaon spectrum, providing a theoretical template for upcoming experimental data comparison.

Findings

Predicted kaon spectrum with high precision

Model parameters are fully constrained by existing data

Results serve as a benchmark for experimental identification

Abstract

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has recently approved a world-unique QCD facility in which an updated version of the external M2 beam line of the CERN SPS in conjunction with a universal spectrometer of the COMPASS experiment is used. One of its main goals is to use highly intense and energetic kaon beams to map out the complete spectrum of excited kaons with an unprecedented precision; having a broad impact not only on low-energy QCD phenomenology, but also on many high-energy particle processes where excited kaons appear, such as the study of CP violation in heavy-meson decays studied at LHCb and Belle~II. In support of the experimental effort, the kaon spectrum is computed herein using a constituent quark model which has been successfully applied to a wide range of hadronic observables, from light to heavy quark sectors, and thus the model parameters are completely constrained. The model's prediction can be used as a template against which to compare the already collected data and future experimental findings, in order to distinguish between conventional and exotic kaon states. We also compare our results with those available in the literature in order to provide some general statements, common to all calculations.