QQqqq¯ quark system, compact pentaquark, and gauge/string duality

Abstract

For the case of two light flavors we propose the stringy description of the system consisting of two heavy and three light quarks, with the aim of exploring the quark organization inside the system and its low-lying Born-Oppenheimer potentials as a function of the heavy quark separation. Our analysis reveals several critical separations related to the processes of string reconnection, breaking and junction annihilation. We find that a compact pentaquark configuration makes the dominant contribution to the potential of the first excited state at small separations, and for separations larger than $0.1\,\text{fm}$, the antiquark-diquark-diquark structure emerges. Moreover, it turns out that the length scale of string junction annihilation is the same as that for the $QQ\bar q\bar q$ system. We also discuss the relation to the potential of the $QQq$ system and some relations among the masses of hadrons in the heavy quark limit.