Pentaquarks from intrinsic charms in $Λ_b$ decays

Abstract

We study the three-body $Λ_b$ decays of $Λ_b\to J/ψpM$ with $M=K^-$ and $π^-$. The two new states ${\cal P}_{c1}\equiv {\cal P}_c(4380)^+$ and ${\cal P}_{c2}\equiv {\cal P}_c(4450)^+$ observed recently as the resonances in the $J/ψp$ invariant mass spectrum of $Λ_b\to J/ψp K^-$ can be identified to consist of five quarks, $uudc\bar c$, being consistent with the existence of the pentaquark states. We argue that, in the doubly charmful $Λ_b$ decays of $Λ_b\to J/ψpK^-$ through $b\to c\bar c s$, apart from those through the non-resonant $Λ_b\to pK^-$ and resonant $Λ_b\to Λ^*\to pK^-$ transitions, the third contribution with the non-factorizable effects is not the dominant part for the resonant $Λ_b\to K^-{\cal P}_{c1,c2}, {\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to J/ψp$ processes, such that we propose that the ${\cal P}_{c1,c2}$ productions are mainly from the charmless $Λ_b$ decays through $b\to \bar u u s$, in which the $c\bar c$ content in ${\cal P}_{c1,c2}$ arises from the intrinsic charms within the $Λ_b$ baryon. We hence predict the observables related to the branching ratios and the direct CP violating asymmetries to be ${\cal B}(Λ_b\to π^-({\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to) J/ψp)/{\cal B}(Λ_b\to K^-({\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to) J/ψp)=0.8\pm 0.1$, ${\cal A}_{CP}(Λ_b\to π^-({\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to)J/ψp)=(-3.9\pm 0.2)\%$, and ${\cal A}_{CP}(Λ_b\to K^-({\cal P}_{c1,c2}\to)J/ψp)=(5.8\pm 0.2)\%$, which can alleviate the inconsistency between the theoretical expectations from the three contributions in the doubly charmful $Λ_b$ decays and the observed data.