Study of open-charm tetraquark states at the LHCb experiment

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the gauge theory of the strong interaction, is characterized by confinement and asymptotic freedom. While perturbative QCD is well established at high energies, the non-perturbative regime, governing the formation and dynamics of hadrons, remains a major challenge in particle physics. Exotic hadrons, with internal structures beyond conventional mesons and baryons predicted by the quark model, serve as a powerful probe of non-perturbative QCD. Among them, open-charm tetraquarks, a class of exotic states carrying a nonzero charm quantum number, were first observed by the LHCb experiment in 2020, opening a new avenue in hadron spectroscopy.

The LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, with its precise vertex reconstruction, excellent particle identification and flexible trigger, is well suited for studying exotic hadrons in heavy-flavour decays. Recent LHCb results on open-charm tetraquarks are presented and compared with related measurements. Future prospects are also discussed.
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