Fully Heavy Pentaquarks with JETHAD: A High-Energy Viewpoint

TL;DR

This paper develops and applies fragmentation functions and the JETHAD framework to analyze the production of fully heavy pentaquarks in high-energy collisions, linking hadronic structure and exotic matter physics.

Contribution

It introduces improved heavy-quark fragmentation functions and applies the JETHAD framework to predict pentaquark production at future colliders.

Findings

Fragmentation functions are suitable for describing pentaquark formation.

NLL/NLO$^+$ calculations provide semi-inclusive production rates.

Analysis connects hadronic structure with exotic matter physics.

Abstract

We examine the leading-power fragmentation of fully heavy pentaquarks in high-energy hadronic collisions. To this end, we complete the release of the hadron-structure-oriented PQ5Q1.0 fragmentation functions, by discussing the $P_{5c}$ set and delivering the $P_{5b}$ one. These functions incorporate an improved computation of the initial-scale input for the constituent heavy-quark fragmentation channel, making them particularly suitable for describing both the direct formation of a compact multicharm state and the hadronization from a diquark-antiquark-diquark configuration. For phenomenological applications, we employ the data-validated (sym)JETHAD framework to compute and analyze NLL/NLO$^+$ semi-inclusive production rates of pentaquark-plus-jet systems at the upcoming HL-LHC and the future FCC. This study marks a further step toward connecting hadronic structure, precision QCD, and the emerging physics of exotic matter.