Revealing the nature of double-strangeness pentaquark states via femtoscopic correlation functions

Abstract

Recent discoveries of exotic hadrons, which cannot be classified within the conventional quark model of $q \bar{q}$ mesons and $qqq$ baryons, strongly imply the existence of dynamically generated hadronic molecules. Some of these hadron-hadron interactions are accompanied by coupled-channel effects, which remain challenging to quantitatively determine. In this work, we demonstrate that femtoscopy provides a sensitive probe of such coupled-channel dynamics. We calculate correlation functions for the double-strangeness pentaquark candidates $P_{css}(4493)$ ($J^P=1/2^-$) and $P_{css}(4633)$ ($J^P=1/2^-$ or $3/2^-$), revealing clear signatures of the attractive interactions that can form bound states. The results are markedly different from those obtained in scenarios that neglect off-diagonal transitions, highlighting the importance of coupled-channel effects for understanding the structure of these hadrons.