Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Particle physics

Vanishing pentaquarks

Nature volume 435, pages 287–288 (2005)Cite this article

After a first inconclusive sighting, the search for exotic particles that consist of five quarks has been hotly pursued in the past few years. But the weight of evidence is now shifting against their existence.

Correct perceptions differ from mistaken ones in that they become clearer when experimental accuracy is improved — Irving Langmuir's observation may have gained a new example with the latest report on the question of the ‘pentaquark’ particle. A high-statistics experiment at the Jefferson Laboratory in Virginia finds no evidence to support claims of the existence of this enigmatic object that have been made over the past three years. Final tests of the data remain to be completed, and a second independent experiment is still in progress. But this is a serious setback for the many who had hoped that this novel particle had revealed unexpected phenomena in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory governing the ‘strong’ interactions of quarks — subatomic particles thought to be elemental and indivisible.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Give me five.

References

  1. Diakonov, D. et al. preprint at http://www.arxiv.org/hep-ph/9703373 (1997).

  2. Nakano, T. et al. (LEPS collaboration) Phys. Rev Lett. 91, 012002 (2003).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Barth, J. et al. (SAPHIR collaboration) preprint at http://www.arxiv.org/hep-ex/0307083 (2003).

  4. Zhao, Q. & Close, F. E. J. Phys. G 31, L1–L5 (2005).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3NP, UK

    Frank Close

Authors
  1. Frank Close
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Close, F. Vanishing pentaquarks. Nature 435, 287–288 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/435287a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/435287a

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing