Speaker
Cheuk-Yin Wong
(Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
Description
In a nuclear collision at RHIC and LHC, a large number of particles
and antiparticles are produced. The production of matter and
antimatter particles in close space-time proximity raises the
interesting question whether chance encounters of some of the produced
charged particles and antiparticles may lead to the formation of
exotic matter-antimatter molecules as debris of the collision. The
detection of new matter-antimatter molecules may be a difficult task.
It is nonetheless an interesting theoretical question to investigate
the general factors affecting the stability of matter-antimatter
molecules. Using a formalism similar to the previous investigation of
the X(3872) as a heavy-quark molecular state [1], we find that
matter-antimatter molecules with charged constituents
(m1+,m2-,m2bar+,m1bar-) possess bound states if their constituent mass
ratio m1/m2 is greater than about 4 [2]. This stability condition
suggests that the binding of matter-antimatter molecules is a rather
common phenomenon. We evaluate the binding energies of exotic
matter-antimatter molecules (mu+ e-)-(e+ mu-), (pi+ e-)-(e+ pi-),
(K+ e-)-(e+ K-), (p e-)-(e+ pbar), (p mu)-(mu+ pbar), and
(K+ mu-)-(mu+ K-), which satisfy the stability condition. We estimate
the molecular annihilation lifetimes in their s states.
[1] C. Y. Wong, Phys. Rev. C69, 055202 (2004).
[2] C. Y. Wong and T. G. Lee, arXiv:1103.5774 (2011).
Primary author
Cheuk-Yin Wong
(Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
Co-author
Teck-Ghee Lee
(Auburn University)
