Isgur-Wise form factors of heavy baryons within a light-front constituent quark model

Abstract

The space-like elastic form factors of baryons containing a heavy quark are investigated within a light-front constituent quark model in the limit of infinite heavy-quark mass, adopting a gaussian-like ansatz for the three-quark wave function. The results obtained for the Isgur-Wise form factors corresponding both to a spin-0 and a spin-1 light spectator pair are presented. It is found that the Isgur-Wise functions depend strongly on the baryon structure, being sharply different in case of diquark-like or collinear-type configurations in the three-quark system. It is also shown that the relativistic effects lead to a saturation property of the form factors as a function of the baryon size. Our results are compared with those of different models as well as with recent predictions from QCD sum rules and lattice QCD simulations; the latter ones seem to suggest the dominance of collinear-type configurations, in which the heavy-quark is sitting close to the center-of-mass of the light quark pair.

latex, 15 pp., 6 figures with epsfig.sty