Hadroproduction data support tetraquark hypothesis for $\chi_{c1} (3872)$

Abstract

We show that the recently proposed tetraquark hypothesis for the nature of the $\chi_{c1}(3872)$ results in a formalism for inclusive production rates that has no unknown parameters. We employ this formalism to compute hadroproduction rates of $\chi_{c1}(3872)$ at the Large Hadron Collider, which agree with measured prompt and nonprompt cross sections. Thus we find that the tetraquark hypothesis for $\chi_{c1}(3872)$ is well supported by hadroproduction data.