Intrinsic heavy flavor production of tetraquarks

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: 17 April 2026

Abstract

A number of new four-quark states containing from one to four heavy quarks have been observed recently. Many of these new states have been discovered at the LHC. The production of these states containing charm quarks via intrinsic charm in the proton is investigated. The tetraquark masses obtained in this approach agree well with the measured masses. These calculations provide insight into the nature of the tetraquark candidates, whether as a bound pair of mesons or as a looser configuration of four uncorrelated partons. The final-state configuration can influence their interactions in nuclear matter. The kinematic distributions of these states as a function of y and p_T were also studied. Previous studies of J/ψ and D̅ mesons produced from such states manifest themselves at forward rapidity and relatively high p_T. The extension to bottom tetraquark candidates is also considered.