A Mechanism for Hadron Molecule Production in <i>pp</i>(<i>p</i>) Collisions

Abstract

The problem of understanding loosely bound hadron molecules prompt production at hadron colliders is still open: how is it possible that meson molecules with binding energy compatible with zero could be formed within the bulk of the hadrons ejected in very high energy collisions? Monte Carlo simulations have been performed in the literature, leading to production cross sections , two orders of magnitude which were smaller than the experimental value. One possible mechanism to reduce this gap could be final state interactions of heavy mesons, but a precise evaluation of such effect is challenged by the presence of pions between the molecular constituents. In this paper , we present a new mechanism by using precisely such comoving pions. Heavy meson pairs can indeed slow down because of elastic scattering with surrounding pions. The number of low-relative-momentum meson pair s increases, thereby enhancing prompt production cross section. In this preliminar simulation , we show that an enhancement of 100 is indeed possible.