Heavy baryons in a pion mean-field approach: A brief review

Abstract

We review in this paper a series of recent works on properties of singly heavy baryons, based on a pion mean-field approach. In the limit of an infinitely heavy-quark mass, the heavy quark inside a heavy baryon can be regarded as a static color source. In this limit, a heavy baryon can be viewed as $N_c-1$ valence quarks bound by the pion mean fields which are created self-consistently by the presence of the $N_c$ valence quarks. We show that this mean-field approach can successfully describe the masses and the magnetic moments of the lowest-lying singly heavy baryons, using all the parameters fixed in the light-baryon sector except for the hyperfine spin-spin interactions. We also review a recent work on identifying the newly found excited $\Omega_c$ baryons reported by the LHCb Collaboration. We discuss possible scenarios to identify them. Finally, we give a future perspective on this pion mean-field approach.