Heavy baryon spectroscopy from the lattice.

The results of an exploratory lattice study of heavy baryon spectroscopy are presented. We have computed the full spectrum of the eight baryons containing a single heavy quark, on a 24{sup 3}{times}48 lattice at {beta}=6.2, using an {ital O}({ital a})-improved fermion action. We discuss the lattice baryon operators and give a method for isolating the contributions of the spin doublets ({Sigma},{Sigma}{sup {asterisk}}), ({Xi}{sup {prime}},{Xi}{sup {asterisk}}), and ({Omega},{Omega}{sup {asterisk}}) to the correlation function of the relevant operator. We compare our results with the available experimental data and find good agreement in both the charm and the {ital b}-quark sectors, despite the long extrapolation in the heavy quark mass needed in the latter case. We also predict the masses of several undiscovered baryons. We compute the {Lambda}-pseudoscalar meson and {Sigma}-{Lambda} mass splittings. Our results, which have errors in the range 10{endash}30{percent}, are in good agreement with the experimental numbers. For the {Sigma}{sup {asterisk}}-{Sigma} mass splitting, we find results considerably smaller than the experimental values for both the charm and the {ital b}-flavored baryons, although in the latter case the experimental results are still preliminary. This is also the case for the lattice results for the hyperfine splitting for the heavy mesons. {copyright} more » {ital 1996 The American Physical Society.} « less