QCD Exotics

Abstract

QCD-motivated models for hadrons predict an assortment of "exotic" hadrons that have structures that are more complex then the quark-antiquark mesons and three-quark baryons of the original quark-parton model. These include pentaquark baryons, the six-quark H-dibaryon, and tetra-quark, hybrid, and glueball mesons. Despite extensive experimental searches, no unambiguous candidates for any of these exotic configurations have yet to be identified. On the other hand, a number of meson states, one that seems to be a proton-antiproton bound state, and others that contain either charmed-anticharmed quark pairs or bottom-antibottom quark pairs, have been recently discovered that neither fit into the quark-antiquark meson picture nor match the expected properties of the QCD-inspired exotics. Here I briefly review results from a recent search for the H-dibaryon, and discuss some properties of the newly discovered states --the so-called XYZ mesons-- and compare them with expectations for conventional quark-antiquark mesons and the predicted QCD-exotic states.