Properties of doubly heavy baryons in the relativistic quark model

Abstract

Mass spectra and semileptonic decay rates of baryons consisting of two heavy (b or c) and one light quark are calculated in the framework of the relativistic quark model. The doubly heavy baryons are treated in the quark-diquark approximation. The ground and excited states of both the diquark and quark-diquark bound systems are considered. The quark-diquark potential is constructed. The light quark is treated completely relativistically, while the expansion in the inverse heavy-quark mass is used. The weak transition amplitudes of heavy diquarks bb and bc going, respectively, to bc and cc are explicitly expressed through the overlap integrals of the diquark wave functions in the whole accessible kinematic range. The relativistic baryon wave functions of the quark-diquark bound system are used for the calculation of the decay matrix elements, the Isgur-Wise function, and decay rates in the heavy-quark limit.