Probing Strong Interactions and Exotic Hadrons at the LHC

• Grant number: 22/05505-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2022
• Status: Discontinued
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics - Nuclear Physics
• Principal Investigator: Sandra dos Santos Padula
• Grantee: Isabela Maietto Silvério
• Host Institution: Núcleo de Computação Científica (NCC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 18/25225-9 - São Paulo Research and Analysis Center, AP.ESP
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/16373-5 - Study of collectivity in small colliding systems using jets with the CMS detector, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

Hadrons used to be defined as quark-antiquark or three valence quark states until the discovery of hadrons containing excited states of heavy quarks: the exotic hadrons know as X, Y, Z. These observations raised questions about the simple picture of the hadronic constitution, although a clear understanding of these states, i.e., if they are molecular states, threshold effects or genuine exotic multiquark states, is still lacking. The answer to these questions is of fundamental importance to help understanding the mechanisms of confinement and of mass generation in quantum chromodynamics, the quantum field theory describing strong interactions. The more recent findings regarding the pentaquark states P^{+}_{c} (4380) and P^{+}_{c} (4450) by the LHCb collaboration at the LHC through the weak decay process \Lambda^{0}_{c} to J/\Psi p K^{-}, have valence quark content P^{+}_{c}=\bar{c}cuud$, and lie close to several charmonium-baryon thresholds. They are also examples of such exotic states, whose structure is also unknown. This decay channel suggests that some insight into the nature of these states could be gained by experimentally investigations the interaction of charmonia with protons, for instance. Over the recent years the femtoscopic method, traditionally employed for probing dimensions of emitting sources produced in high energy collisions, has been employed to extract information about the strong interaction felt by hadrons after their emission. The present thesis project proposes to employ femtoscopy to gain insight into the structure of exotic hadrons produced in such collisions by using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, CERN. Of particular interest are systems formed by a heavy quark-antiquark pair and two or three light quarks, such as the aforementioned pentaquarks P^{+}_{c}(4380) and P^{+}_{c}(4450).