Heavy hadrons in atomic nuclei and nuclear matter

The heavy exotic hadrons called X, Y, Z and Pc including heavy flavors (charm and bottom) can give us new information about various properties of hadrons, such as inner structures of hadrons, inter-hadron interactions, and so on. Now research of the heavy hadrons are interesting also in nuclear systems, such as atomic nuclei and nuclear matter, because they are useful to study the following properties: (i) the interaction between heavy hadrons and nucleons, (ii) the modifications of nuclear structures, (iii) the change of QCD vacuum properties at finite density. These systems are called charm nuclei or bottom nuclei. Charm and bottom nuclei can be regarded as extension of flavors from normal nuclei and strangeness nuclei to multi-flavor nuclei, and they will give us new insights for the role of flavors in nuclear medium.

In the presentation, I will review the results in theoretical studies for heavy hadrons in atomic nuclei and nuclear matter. I will focus on the role of the heavy quark spin symmetry. The heavy quark spin symmetry is the basic symmetry derived from the QCD Lagrangian, and thus it provides us with one of the general ways for understanding the properties of the heavy hadrons in nuclear medium. As specific examples, I will pick up several topics which has been discussed in the literature. I will also present the recent development in studies of charm baryons in nuclear medium.

I furthermore will discuss the possible setups for studying the heavy hadrons in atomic nuclei in experimental facilities. We will consider the relativistic heavy ion collisions and the high energy hadron (pion, proton, antiproton) beams, and discuss the possible reaction mechanisms for producing charm and bottom nuclei.

Ref. A. Hosaka, T. Hyodo, Y. Yamaguchi, S. Yasui, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 96, 88 (2017)