Plenty of hadrons have been established experimentally, yet the nonperturbative nature of the strong interaction complicates a comprehensive understanding of their internal structure, particularly for exotic hadrons that extend beyond conventional mesons and baryons. One prominent candidate for the internal structure of exotic hadrons is the hadronic molecule, a loosely bound system of hadrons analogous to atomic nuclei. Understanding such systems requires precise knowledge of hadron interactions, which traditional scattering experiments struggle to provide, especially in the low-energy region. Recent advances, including precise baryon-baryon interaction measurements, femtoscopy techniques that probe momentum correlations between particles, and first-principles lattice QCD calculations, have significantly improved our understanding of hadron interactions. Here, we review these recent developments, demonstrate the successful application of femtoscopy to antikaon-nucleon interactions, utilize the concept of compositeness to quantify the hadronic molecular component of the Lambda(1405), and discuss both experimental and theoretical prospects, including future studies at J-PARC.
Tetsuo Hyodo (Wed,) studied this question.