Charming mesons with baryons and nuclei

Abstract

The properties of charmed mesons in nuclear matter and nuclei are reviewed. Different frameworks are discussed paying a special attention to unitarized coupled-channel approaches which incorporate heavy-quark spin symmetry. Several charmed baryon states with negative parity are generated dynamically by the s-wave interaction between pseudoscalar and vector meson multiplets with $1/2^{+}$ and $3/2^{+}$ baryons. These states are compared to experimental data. Moreover, the properties of open-charm mesons in matter are analyzed. The in-medium solution accounts for Pauli blocking effects, and for the meson self-energies in a self-consistent manner. The behavior in the nuclear medium of the rich spectrum of dynamically-generated baryon states is studied as well as their influence in the self-energy and, hence, the spectral function of open charm. The possible experimental signatures of the in-medium properties of open charm are finally addressed, such as the formation of charmed nuclei, in connection with the future FAIR facility.

22 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, invited review article in International Journal of Modern Physics E