Tetraquark Production by Intrinsic Charm

¹ Nuclear and Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA
² Physics and Astronomy Department, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

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Published online: 5 November 2025

Abstract

A number of new four-quark states containing from one to four c or ̅c quarks have been observed recently. Many of these new states have been discovered at the LHC. The production of these states via intrinsic charm in the proton is investigated. The tetraquark masses obtained in this approach, agree well with the measured masses. These calculations can provide some insight into the nature of the tetraquark candidates, whether as a bound meson pair or as a looser configuration of four individual partons which can influence their interactions in nuclear medium, such as in heavy-ion collisions. The kinematic distributions of these states as a function of y and p_T are also studied. The possible cross sections for these states are also considered.