Production and absorption of exotic bottomonium-like states in high energy heavy ion collisions

Abstract

We investigate the production and absorption of $Z_b(10610)$ and $Z_b^{\prime }(10650)$ states in a hadronic medium, via the processes ${\bar{B}}^{(\ast )}{B}^{(\ast )}\to \pi Z_b^{(\prime )}$ and the corresponding inverses reactions. We use effective field Lagrangians based on an $SU(4)$-extension of the hidden gauge formalism to account for the couplings between light and heavy mesons, and a phenomenological Lagrangian involving the $B^{\ast }{B}^{(\ast )}{Z}_b^{(\prime )}$ vertices. The absorption cross sections are found to be much larger than the production ones.

Comments: 8 pages; 13 figures; Version accepted for publication in PRD