Exotic Baryon

Exotic baryons are hypothetical composite particles which are bound states of 3 quarks and additional elementary particles. This is to be contrasted with ordinary baryons, which are bound states of just 3 quarks. The additional particles may include quarks, antiquarks or gluons.

One such exotic baryon is the pentaquark, which consists of four quarks and an antiquark. Another exotic baryon which consists only of quarks is the H dibaryon, which consists of two up quarks, two down quarks and two strange quarks. Unlike the pentaquark, this particle might be long lived or even stable. There have been unconfirmed claims of detections of pentaquarks and dibaryons.

Several types of exotic baryons which require physics beyond the Standard Model have been conjectured in order to explain specific experimental anomalies. There is no independent experimental evidence for any of these particles. One example is supersymmetric R-baryons, which are bound states of 3 quarks and a gluino. The lightest R-baryon is denoted as and consists of an up quark, a down quark, a strange quark and a gluino. This particle is expected to be long lived or stable and has been invoked to explain ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. Stable exotic baryons are also candidates for strongly interacting dark matter.

It has been speculated by futurologist Ray Kurzweil the end of the 21st century it may be possible by using femtotechnology to create new chemical elements composed of exotic baryons that would eventually constitute a new periodic table of elements in which the elements would have completely different properties than the regular chemical elements.