Pentaquark baryons in string theory

The recently observed pentaquark baryons Theta(+) and Xi(--) are studied in the dual gravity theory of QCD. By developing a general formulation useful for studying the branched string web in a curved space, simple mass formulae of the pentaquark baryons are derived in the Maldacena prototype model for supersymmetric QCD and a more realistic model for ordinary QCD. Even though the approximations adopted here in deriving these formulae are extremely naive, the predicted values of the masses do not differ significantly from their experimental values. We thus conclude that this approach is promising for the purpose of obtaining a description of the observed masses of pentaquarks and of their extremely narrow decay widths. With the aim of constructing more reliable mass formulae, a preliminary sketch is given of how spin, the hyperfine interaction and parity are considered in the string picture.