We present a study of the pentaquark system in quenched lattice QCD using
diquark-diquark and kaon-nucleon local and smeared interpolating fields. We
examine the volume dependence of the spectral weights of local correlators on
lattices of size 163×32, 243×32 and 323×64 at
β=6.0. We find that a reliable evaluation of the volume dependence of the
spectral weights requires accurate determination of the correlators at large
time separations. Our main result from the spectral weight analysis in the
pentaquark system is that within our variational basis and statistics we can
not exclude a pentaquark resonance. However our data also do not allow a clear
identification of a pentaquark state since only the spectral weights of the
lowest state can be determined to sufficient accuracy to test for volume
dependence. In the negative parity channel the mass extracted for this state is
very close to the KN threshold whereas in the positive parity channel is about
60% above.Comment: Manuscript expanded, discussion of two-pion system included, a
comment regarding Ref.13 was corrected, version to appear in Phys. Rev. D, 19
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