Tritonlike molecules of three identical baryons

Abstract

In nuclear physics, triton and helium-3 nucleus can be understood as three-body hadronic molecules. Analogous to the loosely bound structures for the triton and helium-3 nucleus, whether there is a bound state formed by three hadrons leaves us an open issue. Based on the one-boson exchange model as well as the adoption of the variational approach, we make a comprehensive investigation on the tritonlike systems of three identical baryons $NNN$, $\Lambda\Lambda\Lambda$, $\Xi\Xi\Xi$ and $\Sigma\Sigma\Sigma$. We predict that the three-body molecular states for the systems of three identical hadrons of baryon octet are probably existent as long as their two-body subsystems have bound states. The numerical results of this work may be helpful for the theoretical and experimental researches on the tri-hadron molecules in future.