Paper detail

Observation of a narrow baryon resonance with positive strangeness formed in $K^+$Xe collisions

The charge-exchange reaction K^+ Xe --> K^0 p Xe' is investigated using the data of the DIANA experiment. The distribution of the pK^0 effective mass shows a prominent enhancement near 1538 MeV formed by \sim 80 events above the background, whose width is consistent with being entirely due to the experimental resolution. Under the selections based on a simulation of K^+Xe collisions, the statistical significance of the signal reaches 5.5σ. We interpret this observation as strong evidence for formation of a pentaquark baryon with positive strangeness, Θ^+(uudd\bar{s}), in the charge-exchange reaction K^+ n --> K^0 p on a bound neutron. The mass of the Θ^+ baryon is measured as m(Θ^+) = 1538+-2 MeV. Using the ratio between the numbers of resonant and non-resonant charge-exchange events in the peak region, the intrinsic width of this baryon resonance is determined as Γ(Θ^+) = 0.34+-0.10 MeV.