Heavy-flavor multimodal fragmentation to S-wave pentacharms at next-generation hadron colliders

We investigate the leading-power fragmentation of fully charmed pentaquark states ( S -wave |cc̄ccc | c c ¯ c c c ⟩ pentacharms) at hadron colliders. We introduce a new set of multimodal collinear fragmentation functions, named . They rely on an enhanced calculation of the initial-scale input for the constituent heavy-quark fragmentation channel, making them well suited to describe the short-distance emission of either a compact multicharm state or a dicharm-charm-dicharm configuration. To explore phenomenological implications, we use the multimodular interface to study NLL/NLO ⁺ + semi-inclusive production rates for pentacharm-plus-jet systems at the forthcoming HL-LHC and the future FCC. Our analysis represents a further step toward bridging the domains of hadronic structure, precision QCD, and exotic matter.