Tetraquark bound states in a Bethe-Salpeter approach

We determine the mass of tetraquark bound states from a coupled system of covariant Bethe-Salpeter equations. Similar in spirit to the quark-diquark model of the nucleon, we approximate the full four-body equation for the tetraquark by a coupled set of two-body equations with meson and diquark constituents. These are calculated from their quark and gluon substructure using a phenomenologically well-established quark-gluon interaction. For the lightest scalar tetraquark we find a mass of the order of 400 MeV and a wave function dominated by the pion-pion constituents. Both results are in agreement with a meson molecule picture for the f(0)(600). Our results furthermore suggest the presence of a potentially narrow all-charm tetraquark in the mass region 5-6 GeV. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.