Pion mean fields and heavy baryons

Abstract

We show that the masses of the lowest-lying heavy baryons can be very well described in a pion mean-field approach. We consider a heavy baryon as a system consisting of the ${N}_{c}\ensuremath{-}1$ light quarks that induce the pion mean field and a heavy quark as a static color source under the influence of this mean field. In this approach we derive a number of model-independent relations and calculate the heavy-baryon masses using those of the lowest-lying light baryons as input. The results are in remarkable agreement with the experimental data. In addition, the mass of the ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{b}^{*}$ baryon is predicted.