Heavy-Flavor Fragmentation: The QCD Portal to Exotic Matter

TL;DR

This paper explores the formation of exotic tetraquark states through collinear fragmentation functions within a nonrelativistic QCD framework, incorporating uncertainty propagation and advanced evolution techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic approach to modeling tetraquark fragmentation, including uncertainty analysis and threshold-consistent evolution, advancing understanding of exotic matter formation.

Findings

First systematic propagation of uncertainties in tetraquark fragmentation.

Development of updated initial-scale inputs from gluon and heavy-quark channels.

Application of threshold-consistent DGLAP evolution within HF-NRevo.

Abstract

We investigate the core dynamics behind exotic matter formation via the TQ4Q1.1 set of collinear fragmentation functions for fully charmed or bottomed tetraquarks in three quantum configurations: scalar ($0^{++}$), axial vector ($1^{+-}$), and tensor ($2^{++}$). We adopt leading-power single-parton fragmentation within a nonrelativistic QCD framework tailored to tetraquark Fock states. Initial-scale inputs are constructed from updated gluon- and heavy-quark channels, and evolved through threshold-consistent DGLAP within HF-NRevo. We present the first systematic propagation of uncertainties from color-composite long-distance matrix elements governing tetraquark hadronization. This study advances the connection between hadronic structure, precision QCD, and exotic matter.