Speaker
Description
The exotic meson $\chi_{c1}(3872)$, also known as $X(3872)$, was discovered a decade ago, but the structure of this new state is still under debate. The masses of possible charmonium states from calculations using constituent quark models are too large, and therefore an explanation of the underlying characteristics of this meson remains a challenge. The similarity of the $\chi_{c1}(3872)$ mass and the $D-\bar{D}^{*}$ mass threshold inspired the interpretation that $\chi_{c1}(3872)$ is a $D-\bar{D}^{*}$ “molecule” with small binding energy. Another explanation is that this meson is a tetra-quark, consisting of a di-quark and di-antiquark. Relativistic heavy ion collisions produce an extremely hot and strongly interacting medium, which provides a new environment in which to study the nature of multi-quark states. Because of the dramatically different radii of a $D-\bar{D}^{*}$ “molecule” and a tetra-quark, the interactions of these two proposed states are expected to interact differently with the medium. Therefore, the yield of $\chi_{c1}(3872)$ in heavy ion collisions can provide insight into its structure. The ratios of production cross-section of fully reconstructed $\chi_{c1}(3872)$ over $\psi(2S)$ in PbPb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV with the CMS detector are presented.
