Heavy-flavor multimodal fragmentation to $S$-wave pentacharms at next-generation hadron colliders

Abstract

We investigate the leading-power fragmentation of fully charmed pentaquark states ($S$-wave $|c\bar{c}ccc\rangle$ pentacharms) at hadron colliders. We introduce a new set of multimodal collinear fragmentation functions, named PQ5Q1.0. They rely on an enhanced calculation of the initial-scale input for the constituent heavy-quark fragmentation channel, making them well suited to describe the short-distance emission of either a compact multicharm state or a dicharm-charm-dicharm configuration. To explore phenomenological implications, we use the (sym)JETHAD multimodular interface to study NLL/NLO$^+$ semi-inclusive production rates for pentacharm-plus-jet systems at the forthcoming HL-LHC and the future FCC. Our analysis represents a further step toward bridging the domains of hadronic structure, precision QCD, and exotic matter.

Figures (9)

• Figure 1: Representative leading diagrams for the initial-scale collinear fragmentation of a constituent heavy antiquark into a color-singlet $S$-wave $P_{5Q}$ pentaquark in the direct multiquark picture. Blue ovals portray the nonperturbative hadronization component of corresponding FFs. Diagrams made with JaxoDraw 2.0Binosi:2008ig.
• Figure 2: Representative leading diagrams for the initial-scale collinear fragmentation of a constituent heavy antiquark into a color-singlet $S$-wave $P_{5Q}$ pentaquark in the scalar-diquark picture. Double lines depict for ${\cal D}(QQ)$ or ${\cal D}(\bar{Q}\bar{Q})$ heavy-diquark states, while black bullets are for gluon-diquark-antidiquark effective vertices. Blue ovals portray the nonperturbative hadronization component of corresponding FFs. Diagrams made with JaxoDraw 2.0Binosi:2008ig.
• Figure 3: Charm to pentacharm initial-scale fragmentation channel in the direct (left) and scalar-diquark (right) picture. For the sake of illustration, an expanded diagonal DGLAP evolution is performed in the range $\mu_{F,0}/2$ to $2\mu_{F,0}$.
• Figure 4: Factorization-scale dependence of PQ5Q1.0 functions describing the collinear fragmentation of $P_{5c}$ states within direct (left) or scalar-diquark (right) initial-scale inputs, at $z = 0.4 \simeq \langle z \rangle$.
• Figure 5: Factorization-scale dependence of TQHL1.1 functions Celiberto:2024beg depicting the collinear fragmentation of $X_{cu\bar{c}\bar{u}}$ (left) and $X_{cs\bar{c}\bar{s}}$ (right) doubly charmed tetraquarks, at $z = 0.4 \simeq \langle z \rangle$.