Penta-quark baryon in anisotropic lattice QCD

TL;DR

This study uses anisotropic lattice QCD to investigate penta-quark baryons, finding that the negative-parity state is likely an NK scattering state rather than a compact penta-quark resonance.

Contribution

Introduces a new Hybrid Boundary Condition method to distinguish compact penta-quark states from scattering states in lattice QCD simulations.

Findings

Negative-parity 5Q state is near NK threshold.

Negative-parity state is identified as NK scattering state.

Positive-parity 5Q state is much heavier than experimental Theta^+(1540).

Abstract

The penta-quark(5Q) baryon is studied in anisotropic quenched lattice QCD with renormalized anisotropy a_s/a_t=4 for a high-precision mass measurement. The standard Wilson action at beta=5.75 and the O(a) improved Wilson quark action with kappa=0.1210(0.0010)0.1240 are employed on a 12^3 \times 96 lattice. Contribution of excited states is suppressed by using a smeared source. We investigate both the positive- and negative-parity 5Q baryons with I=0 and spin J=1/2 using a non-NK-type interpolating field. After chiral extrapolation, the lowest positive-parity state is found to have a mass, m_{Theta}=2.25 GeV, which is much heavier than the experimentally observed Theta^+(1540). The lowest negative-parity 5Q appears at m_{Theta}=1.75 GeV, which is near the s-wave NK threshold. To distinguish spatially-localized 5Q resonances from NK scattering states, we propose a new general method imposing a ``Hybrid Boundary Condition (HBC)'', where the NK threshold is artificially raised without affecting compact five-quark states. The study using the HBC method shows that the negative-parity state observed on the lattice is not a compact 5Q but an s-wave NK-scattering state.