Masses of ground-state mesons and baryons, including those with heavy quarks

Abstract

Using a confining, symmetry-preserving regularisation of a vector$\times$vector contact interaction, we compute the spectra of ground-state pseudoscalar and vector $(f\bar g)$ mesons, scalar and axial-vector $(fg)$ diquarks, and $J^P=1/2^+, 3/2^+$ $(fgh)$ baryons, where $f,g,h \in \{u,d,s,c,b\}$. The diquark correlations are essentially dynamical and play a key role in formulating and solving the three-valence-quark baryon problems. The baryon spectrum obtained from this largely-algebraic approach reproduces the 22 known experimental masses with an accuracy of $2.9(2.4)$%. It also possesses the richness of states typical of constituent-quark models, predicting many heavy-quark baryons not yet observed. This study indicates that diquark correlations are an important component of all baryons; and owing to the dynamical character of the diquarks, it is typically the lightest allowed diquark correlation which defines the most important component of a baryon's Faddeev amplitude.