A note on Charmed and Bottomed Pentaquark Production by Fragmentation

Abstract

H1 Collaboration recently observed the charmed pentaquark. In this short note, we point out that the dominant production mechanism for pentaquark consisting of a heavy quark is heavy quark fragmentation. We obtain a crude estimate on the fragmentation probability for charm quark into Theta_c^0, based on the known fragmentation probabilities of charm quark into mesons and baryons: f(c-bar --> Theta_c^0) =~ (2-7) x 10^{-3}. Similarly, we also obtain the fragmentation probability for bottom quark into Theta_b^+: f(b-bar --> Theta_b^+) =~ (5-20) x 10^{-3}. We also estimate the prospect of observing Theta_c^0 and Theta_b^+ at HERA, LEP, and Tevatron.