Physics Letters B 770 (2017) 236–241
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Production of
+
c
hypernuclei in antiproton–nucleus collisions
R. Shyam
a,∗
, K. Tsushima
b
a
Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, 1/AF Bidhan Nagar, Kolkata 700064, India
b
Laboratório de Física Teórica e Computacional, Universidade Cruzeiro do Sul, Rua Galvão Bueno, 868, Liberdade 01506-000, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
23 December 2016
Received
in revised form 5 April 2017
Accepted
24 April 2017
Available
online 27 April 2017
Editor:
W. Haxton
Keywords:
Production
of
+
c
hypernuclei
Antiproton–nucleus
collisions
Covariant
production model
Bound
charm-baryon spinors from
quark–meson coupling model
We investigate the production of charm-baryon hypernucleus
16
+
c
Oin the antiproton–
16
O collisions within
a fully covariant model that is based on an effective Lagrangian approach. The explicit
¯
−
c
+
c
production
vertex is described by the t-channel D
0
and D
∗0
meson-exchanges in the initial collision of the incident
antiproton with one of the protons of the target nucleus. The
+
c
bound state spinors as well as the
self-energies of the exchanged mesons employed in our calculations are derived from the quark–meson
coupling model. The parameters of various vertices are taken to be the same as those used in our previ-
ous
study of the elementary
¯
p + p →
¯
−
c
+
+
c
reaction. We find that for antiproton beam momenta of
interest to the
¯
PANDA experiment, the 0
◦
differential cross sections for the formation of
16
+
c
Ohypernu-
clear
states with simple particle–hole configurations, have magnitudes in the range of a few μb/sr.
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
The investigation of the production of heavy flavor hadrons
consisting of a charm-quark is of considerable interest as it pro-
vides
an additional means for a better understanding of quantum
chromodynamics (QCD) (see, e.g., Refs. [1,2]). The future
¯
PANDA
(“antiproton
annihilation at Darmstadt”) experiment at the under-
construction
antiproton and ion research facility (FAIR) in Darm-
stadt,
Germany, includes a rich program on the measurements of
the charm-meson and charm-baryon production in the antipro-
ton
(
¯
p) collisions with proton and nuclei at the beam momenta
≤ 15 GeV/c [3]. The accurate knowledge of the charm-meson
¯
DD
(
¯
D
0
D
0
and D
−
D
+
) production cross sections in these reactions, is
important because the charmonium states above the open charm
threshold will generally be identified by means of their decays to
¯
DD channels if allowed [4,5].
Studies
of the production and spectroscopy of charm-baryons
(e.g.
+
c
) are similarly interesting. In contrast to the mesons, there
can be more states of these systems as there are more possibilities
of orbital excitations due the presence of three quarks. At higher
¯
p
beam
momenta at the
¯
PANDA facility the yields of the channels
with charm-baryons exceed those of the charm-meson channels by
factors of 3–4, which is confirmed by calculations of the produc-
tions
of
¯
−
c
+
c
and
¯
DD pairs in the
¯
pp collisions in Refs. [6–9]. In
studies of the charm-baryon production in the
¯
p induced reactions
on proton or nuclei the production of extra particles is not needed
*
Corresponding author .
E-mail
address: radhey.shyam@saha.ac.in (R. Shyam).
for the charm conservation, which reduces the threshold energy as
compared to, say, pp collisions. Investigations of the charm-baryon
(and also charm-meson) productions in the
¯
p-nucleus collisions
explore the properties of charm-hadrons in the nuclear medium
and provide information about the charm hadron–nucleon (N) in-
teraction
in the nuclear medium [10–12].
The
+
c
–N interaction has come in focus after discoveries of
many exotic hadrons [e.g., X(3872), and Z(4430)] by the Belle
experiments [13,14]. These hadrons are considered to be either
the 4-quark bound states including the charm one or the com-
posite
states of two (or more) hadrons (see, e.g., Ref. [15] for a
review). There is no conclusive evidence for the existence of the
two-body bound states in the
+
c
–N channel. It will critically de-
pend
on the nature of the
+
c
–N interaction. Because performing
scattering experiments in this channel is not feasible for the time
being, alternative methods will have to be explored for determin-
ing
this interaction. Some effort has been made in this direction
in the lattice QCD calculations by the HAL QCD collaboration [16],
but their results are limited to pion masses around or in excess
of 600 MeV. Another viable alternative is to study
+
c
hypernu-
clei
that can be produced in the
¯
p induced reactions on nuclei at
the
¯
PANDA facility . In the past the study of the hypernuclear
states has provided important information about the –N interac-
tion
(see, e.g., the reviews [17–19]). Furthermore, in a theoretical
study of the -hypernuclei, it has been shown that the properties
of the states of such nuclei are strongly dependent on the nature
of the –N interaction [20].
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2017.04.057
0370-2693/
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.