Light quark fragmentation into S-wave fully charmed tetraquark

TL;DR

This paper calculates the probability of a light quark transforming into a fully-charmed tetraquark using NRQCD, predicting its production rates at high-energy colliders and comparing it with other fragmentation sources.

Contribution

It provides the first calculation of light quark fragmentation functions into fully-charmed tetraquarks within the NRQCD framework at leading order.

Findings

Light quark fragmentation contributes to $T_{4c}$ production at high $p_{T}$.

Production cross section from light quarks is smaller than from gluons.

Light quark fragmentation yields larger cross sections than charm quark fragmentation.

Abstract

We compute the fragmentation function of a light quark into S-wave fully-charmed tetraquarks ($T_{4c}$) within the nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) framework, at leading order in $\alpha_{s}$ and $v$. We present results for light quark fragmentation into $T_{4c}$ and predict its contribution to $T_{4c}$ production at high transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) at the LHC and EIC. We also compare light quark fragmentation with charm quark and gluon fragmentation channels. Our analysis shows that the production cross section for $T_{4c}$ from light quark fragmentation is smaller than that from gluon fragmentation but larger than that from charm quark fragmentation.