Heavy baryon-antibaryon molecules in effective field theory

Abstract

We discuss the effective field theory description of bound states composed of a heavy baryon and antibaryon. This framework is a variation of the ones already developed for heavy meson-antimeson states to describe the X(3872) or the Zc and Zb resonances. We consider the case of heavy baryons for which the light quark pair is in S-wave and we explore how heavy quark spin symmetry constrains the heavy baryon-antibaryon potential. The one pion exchange potential mediates the low energy dynamics of this system. We determine the relative importance of pion exchanges, in particular the tensor force. We find that in general pion exchanges are probably nonperturbative for the ΣQΣQ, ΣQ∗ΣQ, and ΣQ∗ΣQ∗ systems, while for the ΞQ′ΞQ′, ΞQ∗ΞQ′, and ΞQ∗ΞQ∗ cases they are perturbative. If we assume that the contact-range couplings of the effective field theory are saturated by the exchange of vector mesons, we can estimate for which quantum numbers it is more probable to find a heavy baryonium state. The most probable candidates to form bound states are the isoscalar ΛQΛQ, ΣQΣQ, ΣQ∗ΣQ, and ΣQ∗ΣQ∗ and the isovector ΛQΣQ and ΛQΣQ∗ systems, both in the hidden charm and hidden bottom sectors. Their doubly charmed and doubly bottom counterparts (ΛQΛQ, ΛQΣQ(∗), ΣQ(∗)ΣQ(∗)) are also good candidates for binding.