The $Z_c^{(\prime)} \to \eta_c \rho$ decay as a discriminant between tetraquarks and meson molecules

Abstract

Understanding the nature of the exotic XYZ resonances is one of the open problems in hadronic spectroscopy. Despite the experimental efforts, the structure of these particles still lacks of an accepted theoretical framework. We propose to use the $Z_c^{(\prime)} \to \eta_c \rho$ decays as a possible discriminant between two of the most popular models: the compact tetraquark and the loosely bound meson molecule. We show that the predictions obtained within the two pictures are significantly different and therefore the proposed decay channel might shed some light on the nature of these states.