Intrinsic heavy flavor production of tetraquarks

A number of new four-quark states containing from one to four heavy quarks have been observed recently. Many of these new states have been discovered at the LHC. The production of these states containing charm quarks via intrinsic charm in the proton is investigated. The tetraquark masses obtained in this approach agree well with the measured masses. These calculations provide insight into the nature of the tetraquark candidates, whether as a bound pair of mesons or as a looser configuration of four uncorrelated partons. The final-state configuration can influence their interactions in nuclear matter. The kinematic distributions of these states as a function of y and pT were also studied. Previous studies of J/ψ and D̅ mesons produced from such states manifest themselves at forward rapidity and relatively high pT. The extension to bottom tetraquark candidates is also considered.