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  • Open Access

Fully-strange tetraquarks: Fall-apart decays and experimental candidates

Feng-Xiao Liu1,2,*, Xian-Hui Zhong3,4,†, and Qiang Zhao1,5,6,‡

  • *Contact author: lfx@usc.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: zhongxh@hunnu.edu.cn
  • ‡Contact author: zhaoq@ihep.ac.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 074025 – Published 13 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5fw9-rmq3

Abstract

We present a systematic analysis of the fall-apart decays for the 1S, 1P, and 2S-wave fully-strange tetraquark states. It shows that most of the fully-strange tetraquark states have a relatively narrow fall-apart decay width of O(10)  MeV. The newly observed axial-vector state X(2300) at BESIII may favor the low-lying 1S-wave 1+− state T(4s)1+−(2323), while the X(2500) resonance observed in the earlier BESIII experiment may favor the low-lying 1P-wave 0−+ state T(4s)0−+(2481). Some fully-strange tetraquark states predicted in theory can be searched for in their dominant fall-apart decay channels in experiments, such as ϕϕ, ϕϕ(1680), η(′)ϕ, η(′)h1(1415), and ϕf2′(1525), to which they have relatively large couplings.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 074025– Published 13 October, 2026
  • Received 10 April 2026
  • Accepted 9 September 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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