Production of the $\Xi N$ dibaryon as a weakly bound system in $pp$ collisions

Abstract

The $\Xi N$ interaction plays an important role in our understanding on the long-anticipated $H$-dibaryon. Recent lattice QCD calculations verified the attractive nature of the $\Xi N$ interaction. On the other hand, whether it is strong enough to generate a bound state remains inconclusive.In this work, assuming that it can generate a weakly bound state, we study the yields of the $\Xi N$ dibaryon for different binding energies in $pp$ collisions at 7 TeV using the coalescence model and the transport model PACIAE. The yields are estimated first numerically and then analytically adopting a Yukawa-type wave function. In particular, we find that in the weak binding limit, there exists a universal relation between the yield and the binding energy, valid for $pp$ collisions.