Exotic hadrons and the future of spectroscopy analysis

QCD continues to surprise us with a growing spectrum of exotic hadrons, including narrow states with clear multiquark content. LHCb has just completed Run 3, adding an unprecedented data sample of about 20/fb, exceptionally rich in spectroscopy, while the HL-LHC program will carry LHCb into the early 2040s, targeting at least 300/fb. The challenge is increasingly not producing interesting data, but finding the manpower to exploit it: amplitude analyses are complex and time-consuming, and promising channels may simply remain unexplored. I will review selected recent LHCb results and the methods behind them.

The ErUM-Data-funded DEMOS project aims to remove this particular bottleneck, as well as a broader one in scientific modeling, by making research models executable, portable, and reusable. Once data and detector simulation are available, large parts of a complex analysis no longer require collaboration-specific infrastructure and could be delegated to machines—towards “partial-wave analysis in one prompt”. Broadly, the effort aims to make sophisticated analyses accessible across disciplines and to a much broader scientific community. As an example of the unexpected questions this can uncover, I will discuss our recent observation of topological structures in multibody decay dynamics. I will close with the opportunities and challenges brought by AI.