Understanding the hadron spectrum is one of the premier challenges in particle physics. For a long time, the quark model has served as an ordering scheme and brought systematics into… Click to show full abstract
Understanding the hadron spectrum is one of the premier challenges in particle physics. For a long time, the quark model has served as an ordering scheme and brought systematics into the hadron zoo. However, many new hadrons that were observed since 2003, including the lowest-lying positive-parity charm-strange mesons ${D_{s0}^*(2317)}$ and ${D_{s1}(2460)}$, do not conform with quark model expectations. Various modifications to the quark model and alternative approaches have been proposed ever since to explain their low masses and decay properties. Here, we demonstrate that if the lightest scalar and axial-vector open heavy-flavor states, amongst them the ${D_{s0}^*(2317)}$ and the ${D_{s1}(2460)}$, are assumed to owe their existence to the nonperturbative dynamics of Goldstone-Boson scattering off ${D}$ and ${D^*}$ mesons, various puzzles in the spectrum of the charm mesons find a natural resolution. Most importantly the ordering of the lightest strange and nonstrange scalars becomes natural. Furthermore it is demonstrated that the well constrained amplitudes for Goldstone-Boson scattering off charm mesons are fully consistent with recent high quality data on the ${B^-\to D^+\pi^-\pi^- }$ final states provided by the LHCb experiment. This implies that the lowest quark-model positive-parity charm mesons, together with their bottom cousins, if realized in nature, do not form the ground-state multiplet. This is similar to the pattern that has been established for the scalar mesons made from light up, down and strange quarks, where the lowest multiplet is considered to be made of states not described by the quark model. In a broader view, the hadron spectrum must be viewed as more than a collection of quark model states.
               
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