ΛcN interaction from lattice QCD and its application to Λc hypernuclei

The interaction between Λc and a nucleon (N) is investigated by employing the HAL QCD method in the (2+1)-flavor lattice QCD on a (2.9fm)3 volume at mπ≃410,570,700 MeV. We study the central potential in S01 channel as well as central and tensor potentials in S13−3D1 channel, and find that the tensor potential for ΛcN is negligibly weak and central potentials in both S01 and S13−3D1 channels are almost identical with each other except at short distances. Phase shifts and scattering lengths calculated with these potentials show that the interaction of ΛcN system is attractive and has a similar strength in S01 and S13 channels at low energies (i.e. the kinetic energy less than about 40 MeV). While the attractions are not strong enough to form two-body bound states, our results lead to a possibility to form Λc hypernuclei for sufficiently large atomic numbers (A). To demonstrate this, we derive a single-folding potential for Λc hypernuclei from the Λc-nucleon potential obtained in lattice QCD, and find that Λc hypernuclei can exist for A≥12 with the binding energies of a few MeV. We also estimate the Coulomb effect for the Λc hypernuclei.