Exotic states in the quarkonium sector

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent experimental discoveries of exotic quarkonium-like states, highlighting evidence for hadronic molecules and other complex quark configurations, advancing understanding of non-conventional hadronic matter.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of experimental progress on XYZ states, including new results on X(3872), X_b, Y states, and charged Z states, emphasizing the observation of exotic hadronic structures.

Findings

Evidence for hadronic molecules among XYZ states

Observation of states with complex quark configurations

Identification of new exotic states like X(3872) and Z_c

Abstract

The discovery of hadronic states beyond the conventional two-quark meson and three-quark baryon picture in the last two decades is one of the most amazing accomplishments in fundamental physics research. Many experiments contributed to this field despite of the original goals of the design. We review the experimental progress on the study of the quarkoniumlike states -- states with at least one heavy quark-antiquark pair and possible light quarks, also known as XYZ states. We give a general review and then focus on the new experimental results on the X(3872) and its bottom-quark partner X_b, the X(3960), the Y(4260), Y(4500), Y(4660), and Y(10750), and the charged charmoniumlike Z_c and Z_{cs} states. The observations suggest that we did observe hadronic molecules and we also observed hadronic states with some other quark configurations. Possible further studies at the existing and future facilities are briefly discussed.