Resonance radiative decays as a tool for its parity determination

Radiative decays of the spin 1/2 baryonic resonances R with the decay mode R -> KN in case of small energy release are considered. Pentaquark is an example of such resonance. It is shown that in case of positive resonance parity corrections to the soft photon radiation formula are large even at low photon energies > 20 MeV and structure terms contributions may be essential, if R size > 1 fm. This effect is absent in case of negative parity. Particularly, measurements of the gamma spectrum in pentaquark radiative decays may allow us to determine its parity.Comment: 5 page

The Evidence for a Pentaquark Signal and Kinematic Reflections

Several recent experiments have reported evidence for a narrow baryon resonance with positive strangeness ($\Theta^+$) at a mass of 1.54 GeV/$c^2$. Baryons with $S=+1$ cannot be conventional $qqq$ states and the reports have thus generated much theoretical speculation about the nature of possible $S=+1$ baryons, including a 5-quark, or pentaquark, interpretation. We show that narrow enhancements in the $K^+n$ effective mass spectrum can be generated as kinematic reflections resulting from the decay of mesons, such as the $f_2(1275)$, the $a_2(1320)$ and the $\rho_3(1690)$.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The Chiral Soliton Model for Arbitrary Colors and Flavors

The quantum numbers of the chiral soliton are derived for an arbitrary number of colors and flavors

Extraction of Kaon Formfactors from K^- -> mu^- nu_mu gamma Decay at ISTRA+ Setup

The radiative decay K->mu nu gamma has been studied at ISTRA+ setup in a new kinematical region. About 22K events of K^- -> mu^- nu_mu gamma have been observed. The sign and value of Fv-Fa have been measured for the first time. The result is Fv-Fa=0.21(4)(4).Comment: 11 pages, 21 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett.

Pion-Muon Asymmetry Revisited

Long ago an unexpected and unexplainable phenomena was observed. The distribution of muons from positive pion decay at rest was anisotropic with an excess in the backward direction relative to the direction of the proton beam from which the pions were created. Although this effect was observed by several different groups with pions produced by different means, the result was not accepted by the physics community, because it is in direct conflict with a large set of other experiments indicating that the pion is a pseudoscalar particle. It is possible to satisfy both sets of experiments if helicity-zero vector particles exist and the pion is such a particle. Helicity-zero vector particles have direction but no net spin. For the neutral pion to be a vector particle requires an additional modification to conventional theory as discussed herein. An experiment is proposed which can prove that the asymmetry in the distribution of muons from pion decay is a genuine physical effect because the asymmetry can be modified in a controllable manner. A positive result will also prove that the pion is NOT a pseudoscalar particle.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

A Naturally Narrow Positive Parity Theta^+

We present a consistent color-flavor-spin-orbital wave function for a positive parity Theta^+ that naturally explains the observed narrowness of the state. The wave function is totally symmetric in its flavor-spin part and totally antisymmetric in its color-orbital part. If flavor-spin interactions dominate, this wave function renders the positive parity Theta^+ lighter than its negative parity counterpart. We consider decays of the Theta^+ and compute the overlap of this state with the kinematically allowed final states. Our results are numerically small. We note that dynamical correlations between quarks are not necessary to obtain narrow pentaquark widths.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, Revtex4, two-column format, version to be published in Phys. Rev. D, includes numerical estimates of decay width

Z^* Resonances: Phenomenology and Models

We explore the phenomenology of, and models for, the Z^* resonances, the lowest of which is now well established, and called the Theta. We provide an overview of three models which have been proposed to explain its existence and/or its small width, and point out other relevant predictions, and potential problems, for each. The relation to what is known about KN scattering, including possible resonance signals in other channels, is also discussed.Comment: 29 pages, uses RevTeX4; expanded version (published form

The theta^+ baryon in soliton models: large Nc QCD and the validity of rigid-rotor quantization

A light collective theta+ baryon state (with strangeness +1) was predicted via rigid-rotor collective quantization of SU(3) chiral soliton models. This paper explores the validity of this treatment. A number of rather general analyses suggest that predictions of exotic baryon properties based on this approximation do not follow from large Nc QCD. These include an analysis of the baryon's width, a comparison of the predictions with general large Nc consistency conditions of the Gervais-Sakita-Dashen-Manohar type; an application of the technique to QCD in the limit where the quarks are heavy; a comparison of this method with the vibration approach of Callan and Klebanov; and the 1/Nc scaling of the excitation energy. It is suggested that the origin of the problem lies in an implicit assumption in the that the collective motion is orthogonal to vibrational motion. While true for non-exotic motion, the Wess-Zumino term induces mixing at leading order between collective and vibrational motion with exotic quantum numbers. This suggests that successful phenomenological predictions of theta+ properties based on rigid-rotor quantization were accidental.Comment: 19 pages; A shorter more readable versio