Recently LHCb reported the discovery of five extremely narrow excited Ω c baryons decaying into Ξ + c K − . We interpret these baryons as bound states of a c-quark and a P -wave ss-diquark. For such a system there are exactly five possible combinations of spin and orbital angular momentum. The narrowness of the states could be a signal that it is hard to pull apart the two s-quarks in a diquark. We predict two of spin 1/2, two of spin 3/2, and one of spin 5/2, all with negative parity. Of the five states two can decay in S-wave and three can decay in D-wave. Some of the D-wave states might be narrower than the S-wave states. We discuss relations among the five masses expected in the quark model and the likely spin assignments and compare with the data. A similar pattern is expected for negative-parity excited Ω b states. An alternative interpretation is noted in which the heaviest two states are 2S excitations with J P = 1/2 + and 3/2 + , while the lightest three are those with J P = 3/2 − , 3/2 − , 5/2 − expected to decay via D-waves. In this case we expect J P = 1/2 − Ω c states around 2904 and 2978 MeV.PACS codes: 12.39. Jh, 13.20.Jf, 13.25.Jx, 14.40 The proposed values of spin-parity J P are ours. An alternative set of assignments is shown in parentheses.State Mass (MeV) a Width (MeV) Proposed J P Ω c (3000) 0 3000.4 ± 0.2 ± 0.1 4.5 ± 0.6 ± 0.3 1/2 − (3/2 − ) Ω c (3050) 0 3050.2 ± 0.1 ± 0.1 0.8 ± 0.2 ± 0.1 1/2 − (3/2 − ) < 1.2 MeV, 95% CL Ω c (3066) 0 3065.6 ± 0.1 ± 0.3 3.5 ± 0.4 ± 0.2 3/2 − (5/2 − ) Ω c (3090) 0 3090.2 ± 0.3 ± 0.5 8.7 ± 1.0 ± 0.8 3/2 − (1/2 + ) Ω c (3119) 0 3119.1 ± 0.3 ± 0.91.1 ± 0.8 ± 0.4 5/2 − (3/2 + ) < 2.6 MeV, 95% CL a Additional common error of +0.3,-0.5 MeV from M (Ξ + c ) uncertainty.
I IntroductionVery recently LHCb reported the discovery of five extremely narrow excited Ω c baryons decaying into Ξ + c K − [1], with masses and widths shown in Table I. We quote also our favored spin-parity assignment for these states, which we shall choose among the 5! = 120 possible permutations if all five states are P -wave excitations of the ss diquark with respect to the charmed quark. Some more recent calculations [2-6] that appeared after the first version of this paper reach the same conclusion. In parentheses we note an alternative assignment if the two heaviest states are 2S excitations.This discovery raises some immediate questions, which we address in detail: In Sec. II we comment on P -wave css baryons. We then analyze spin-dependent forces for the css system in Sec. III, building upon similar results [7] obtained previously for the negative-parity Σ c states. We evaluate the energy cost for a P -wave css excitation in Sec. IV, carry our results over to the Ω b system in Sec. V, discuss alternative interpretations of the spectrum in Sec. VI, and conclude in Sec. VII. Details of calculating the spin-dependent mass shifts are presented in Appendix A, with a linearized approximation in Appendix B.II P -wave c(ss) system Consider the (ss) in c(ss) to be an S-wave color3 c diquark....