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UTTG-06-13
Tetraquark Mesons in Large-N Quantum Chromodynamics
Steven Weinberg

Theory Group, Department of Physics, University of Texas

Austin, TX, 78712
Abstract
It is argued that exotic mesons consisting of two quarks and two antiquarks
are not ruled out in quantum chromodynamics with a large number N of
colors, as generally thought. They can come in two varieties: short-lived
tetraquarks with decay rates proportional to N, which would be unobserv-
able if N were suciently large, and long-lived tetraquarks with decay rates
proportional to 1/N. The f
0
(500) and f
0
(980) may be examples of these
two varieties of exotic mesons.

Electronic address: [email protected]

1
The suggestion[1] to consider quantum chromodynamics in the limit of a
large number N of colors, with the gauge coupling g vanishing in this limit
as 1/

N, has been had some impressive success in reproducing qualitative

features of strong interaction phenomena. In his classic Erice lectures[2]
describing these results, Coleman concluded that, for large N, quantum
chromodynamics should not admit tetraquark mesons exotic mesons that
are formed from a pair of quarks and a pair of antiquarks a result that
has been widely accepted[3]. This note will complete Colemans argument
and then point out exceptions to his conclusion. The large N approximation
not only does not rule out tetraquark mesons, it helps to understand their
properties.
Colemans reasoning was as follows. By Fierz rearrangements of fermion
elds, any color-neutral operator formed from two quark and two antiquark
elds can be put in the form
Q(x) =

ij
C
ij
B
i
(x)B
j
(x) , (1)
where the B
i
(x) are various color-neutral quark bilinears:
B
i
(x) =

a
q
a
(x)
i
q
a
(x) . (2)
Here q
a
is a column of canonically normalized quark elds,

with a an N-
component SU(N) color index and with spin and avor indices suppressed;
the
i
are various N-independent spin and avor matrices; and the C
ij
are
some symmetric numerical coecients, which we will take as N-independent.
Coleman considered the vacuum expectation value of two of these elds,
given by a decomposition into disconnected and connected parts
Q(x)Q(y)
0
=

ijkl
C
ij
C
kl

B
i
(x)B
k
(y)
0
B
j
(x)B
l
(y)
0
+ B
i
(x)B
j
(x)B
k
(y)B
l
(y)
0,conn

. (3)
(We drop disconnected terms that are coordinate-independent.) A one-
tetraquark pole can only appear in the nal, connected, term, but according
to the usual rules for counting powers of N, the rst term is of order N
2
,

In his article Coleman used bilinears B

i
(x) dened to contain an extra factor of
g
2
N
1/2
N
1/2
. This makes no dierence to results for observables.
2
while the nal term is only of order N, and so any one-tetraquark pole would
make a contribution in (3) that is relatively suppressed by a factor 1/N.
So far, so good, but what does this really show? Coleman concluded In
the large-N limit, quadrilinears make meson pairs and nothing else. But is
this justied? If there is a tetraquark meson pole in the connected part of
the propagator, what dierence does it make if its residue is small compared
with the disconnected part? To take an analogy, the amplitude for ordinary
meson-meson scattering is proportional to the connected part of a four-point
function involving four quark-antiquark bilinear operators, which is of order
N, while the disconnected parts of the same four-point function are of order
N
2
. Does this mean that ordinary mesons do not scatter in the large N
limit?
The real question is the decay rate of a supposed tetraquark meson.
If the width of the tetraquark grows as some power of N, while its mass
is independent of N, then for very large N it may not be observable as a
distinct particle. Although Coleman did not address this issue, his discussion
does suggest that the rate for an tetraquark meson to decay into two ordinary
mesons does grow with N. As we will now see, this is correct, but with an
important exception.
To calculate decay rates, we need to represent particle states with op-
erators that are properly normalized to be used as LSZ interpolating elds.
The propagator for a quark bilinear operator B
n
(x) representing an ordinary
meson is proportional to N, but the residue of the pole in the propagator of a
properly normalized operator should be N-independent, so as noted by Cole-
man, the properly normalized operators for creating and destroying ordinary
mesons are N
1/2
B
n
(x). Similarly, if there is an one-tetraquark pole in the
connected term in (3), then since the connected term in Eq. (3) is of order
N, the correctly normalized operator for creating or destroying a tetraquark
meson is N
1/2
Q(x). The amplitude for the decay of a tetraquark meson
into ordinary mesons of type n and m is then proportional to a suitable
Fourier transform of the three-point function
N
3/2
T{Q(x)B
n
(y)B
m
(z)}
0
= N
3/2

ij
C
ij
T{B
i
(x)B
n
(y)}
0
T{B
j
(x)B
m
(z)}
0
+ N
3/2
T{Q(x)B
n
(y)B
m
(z)}
0,conn
. (4)
The connected second term on the right is of order N
3/2
N = N
1/2
, but
the rst term is larger, of order N
3/2
N
2
= N
1/2
, giving a decay rate pro-
3
portional to N. In this case a tetraquark meson would become unobservable
for N , though one may still wonder about the relevance of this result.
The physical value N = 3 may or may not be taken as large, but it cant be
regarded as innite.
In any case, there is an exception to the rule that tetraquark mesons
become increasingly unstable for increasing N. It may be that the bilinears
B
i
(x) in Eq. (1) have quantum numbers that do not match those of any
meson light enough to appear in the decay of the tetraquark meson repre-
sented by Q(x). In that case the tetraquark decay amplitude would arise
entirely from the second term in Eq. (4), which would give a decay rate of
the tetraquark into two light ordinary mesons proportional to 1/N, just as
in the decay of ordinary mesons.
We can nd examples of both kinds. For an example of a short-lived
tetraquark, consider a J
PC
= 0
++
isoscalar tetraquark meson, represented
by the operator
Q(x) =

ab

q
a
(x)
5

t q
a
(x)

q
b
(x)
5

t q
b
(x)

, (5)
where

t is an isospin matrix. In this case the decay into two pions can
proceed through the rst term in Eq. (4), and the decay rate is of order N.
This may be the case for a plausible tetraquark[4], the very broad f
0
(500),
which has a width for two-pion decay of 400 to 700 MeV.
For an example of a long-lived tetraquark, consider the case of a dierent
J
PC
= 0
++
isoscalar tetraquark meson represented by the operator
Q(x) =

a
u
a
(x)
5
u
a
(x) +

a
d
a
(x)
5
d
a
(x)

2
, (6)
or
Q(x) =

a
s
a
(x)
5
u
a
(x)

2
+

a
s
a
(x)
5
d
a
(x)

2
. (7)
The lightest meson with the quantum numbers of these choices of B(x) are
the (548) and the K(495). If a 0
++
tetraquark meson represented by (6)
or (7) is lighter than 2m

or 2m
K
, respectively, its decay would receive
no contribution from the rst term in Eq. (4). Its decay amplitude would
arise entirely from the second term in Eq. (4), which would give a decay
rate (for instance, into two pions) proportional to 1/N. This may be the
case for instance for the f
0
(980), which is plausibly identied as a tetraquark
4
meson[4], and has a width of only 40 to 100 MeV. The large N approximation
not only does not rule out such exotic messons it can explain why they
are narrow.
The large N approximation gives an objective meaning to a statement
that a tetraquark represented by a product B
1
(x)B
2
(x) of quark bilinears is
a composite of the ordinary mesons represented by B
1
(x) and B
2
(x), even
where the tetraquark meson is much lighter or much heavier than the sum of
these ordinary meson masses. It is not only that the two-meson intermediate
state dominates the propagator of the tetraquark operator Q(x), as shown
by Coleman. More relevant to experiment, the contribution of a two-meson
state to mesonmeson scattering is proportional to [(N
1/2
)
4
N]
2
= 1/N
2
,
while since the amplitude for the tetraquark to go into two ordinary mesons
is proportional to N
1/2
, the contribution of a tetraquark pole (if there is
one) is proportional to [N
1/2
]
2
= N. Hence, whatever its mass, for large N
the one-tetraquark intermediate state dominates the scattering of these two
ordinary mesons in the partial wave with the same quantum numbers as the
tetraquark.
It would be interesting to apply this analysis to a wider variety of
tetraquarks, with quantum numbers other than 0
++
, T = 0, and also taking
avor SU(3) symmetry into account.
I am grateful to Frank Close and Philip Page for helpful correspondence,
and to Tamar Friedmann for a seminar talk that spurred my interest in
tetraquarks. This material is based upon work supported by the National
Science Foundation under Grant Number PHY-0969020 and with support
from The Robert A. Welch Foundation, Grant No. F-0014.
-
1. G. t Hooft, Nucl. Phys. B75, 461 (1974).
2. S. Coleman, Aspects of Symmetry (Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge, UK, 1985), pp. 377-378.
3. For instance, see P. R. Page, in Intersections of Particle and Nuclear
Physics: 8th Conference, ed. Z. Parsa (American Institute of Physics,
2003), p. 513.
5
4. R. J. Jae, Phys. Rev. D 15, 267 (1977); F. E. Close and N. A.
T ornqvist, J. Phys. G 28, R249 (2002) [hep-ph/0204205]; T. Fried-
mann, to appear in Eur. Phys. J. C [arXiv:0910.2229].
6