CERN Accelerating science

In the last 15 years, several exotic hadrons, whose quark content is different from the conventional mesons and baryons, have been observed by various experiments. The quark composition and binding mechanisms of these hadrons are still unclear, and searches for new exotic candidates, along with new production mechanisms and decay modes of already observed unconventional states, will provide new insights in our understanding of the non-perturbative regime of QCD. In this talk, an overview of the current experimental status and latest results achieved by the LHCb collaboration will be presented, including the first evidence for the charged $Z_c(4100)^-$ charmonium-like meson through a Dalitz plot analysis of $B^0 \to \eta_c(1S)K^+\pi^-$ decays, and the model-independent evidence for exotic contributions to $B^0 \to J/\psi K^+\pi^-$ decays.