An alternative way to decipher the nature of the doubly charmed tetraquark \(T_{cc}(3875)^+\): its antiparticle \(T_{{\bar c}{\bar c}}(3875)^-\) photoproduction off nuclei near threshold

Abstract

We study the inclusive photoproduction of \(T_{{\bar c}{\bar c}}(3875)^-\) mesons (which are the antiparticles of the doubly charmed tetraquarks \(T_{cc}(3875)^+\) discovered recently by the LHCb Collaboration) from nuclei in the near-threshold energy region within the nuclear spectral function approach by considering incoherent direct (\({\gamma}p(n) \to D^+(D^0){T_{{\bar c}{\bar c}}(3875)^-}\Lambda^+_c\)) photon--nucleon \(T_{{\bar c}{\bar c}}(3875)^-\) creation processes as well as five possible different scenarios for their internal structure with the main goal of clarifying the possibility to decipher this structure (and, hence, that of \(T_{cc}(3875)^+\)) in photoproduction via integral and differential observables. We calculate the absolute and relative excitation functions for \(T_{{\bar c}{\bar c}}(3875)^-\) production off \(^{12}\)C and \(^{184}\)W target nuclei at near-threshold photon beam energies of 30--38 GeV, the absolute differential cross sections for their production off these target nuclei at laboratory polar angles of 0\(^{\circ}\)--10\(^{\circ}\) as well as the A and momentum dependences of the relative (transparency ratios) cross sections for \(T_{{\bar c}{\bar c}}(3875)^-\) production at photon energy of 35 GeV within the adopted scenarios for the \(T_{{\bar c}{\bar c}}(3875)^-\) meson intrinsic structure. We demonstrate that the absolute and relative observables considered show a certain sensitivity to these scenarios. Therefore, the measurement of such observables in future experiments at the proposed high-luminosity electron-ion colliders EIC and EicC in the US and China in the near-threshold energy region might shed light on the \(T_{cc}(3875)^+\) internal structure.