Production of hidden-heavy and double-heavy hadronic molecules at the $Z$ factory of CEPC

TL;DR

This paper estimates the production rates of various heavy exotic hadronic molecules at the CEPC Z factory, highlighting the potential for experimental discovery of these states through simulated collision data.

Contribution

It provides the first order-of-magnitude estimates of production cross sections for hidden/double-heavy hadronic molecules at CEPC, using Monte Carlo simulations and final state interaction models.

Findings

$X(3872)$ and $Z_c(3900)$ production cross sections are at pb level.

Double-charm molecules have significantly lower production rates.

$Z_b$ states could produce tens to hundreds of fb, enabling millions of events.

Abstract

With a clean environment and high collision energy, the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) would be an excellent facility for heavy flavor physics. Using the Monte Carlo event generator Pythia, we simulate the production of the charmed (bottom) hadron pairs in the electron-positron collisions at the $Z$ factory of CEPC, and the inclusive production rates for typical candidates of the hidden/double-charm and hidden/double-bottom $S$-wave hadronic molecules are estimated at an order-of-magnitude level with the final state interactions after the hadron pair production. The predicted cross sections for the hidden-charm meson-meson molecules $X(3872)$ and $Z_c(3900)$ are at $\rm{pb}$ level, which are about two to three orders of magnitude larger than the production cross sections for the double-charm meson-meson molecules $T_{cc}$ and $T_{cc}^{*}$, as the double-charmed ones require the production of two pairs of $c\bar{c}$ from the $Z$ boson decay. The production cross sections for the hidden-charm pentaquark states $P_{c}$ and $P_{cs}$ as meson-baryon molecules are a few to tens of fb, which are about one magnitude larger than those of the possible hidden-charm baryon-antibaryon and double-charm meson-baryon molecules. In the bottom sector, the production cross sections for the $Z_b$ states as $B^{(*)}\bar{B}^{*}$ molecules are about tens to hundreds of fb, indicating $10^6$ - $10^7$ events from a two-year operation of CEPC, and the expected events from the double-bottom molecules are about 2 - 5 orders of magnitude smaller than the $Z_b$ states. Our results shows great prospects of probing heavy exotic hadrons at CEPC.