Decay of the image in a quark model Original Research Article

We study the decay of the pentaquark baryon in a non-relativistic quark model for positive and negative parity Θ+ states. The decay amplitudes are expressed as products of a spectroscopic factor and an interaction matrix element. It is shown that relatively narrow widths can be obtained for positive parity states, while the negative parity state of (0s)5 configuration couples strongly to the KN continuum states leading to very broad widths. It is also pointed out that the width of a 3/2− state should be strongly suppressed.