Critical review of deeply bound kaonic nuclear states

Abstract

We critically revise the recent claims of narrow deeply bound kaonic states and show that at present there is no convincing experimental evidence for their existence. In particular, we discuss in details the claim of K- pp deeply bound state associated to a peak seen in the Lambda p invariant mass spectrum from K- nuclear absorption reactions by the FINUDA collaboration. An explicit theoretical simulation shows that the peak is simply generated from a two-nucleon absorption process, like K- pp --> Lambda p, followed by final-state interactions of the produced particles with the residual nucleus.