Stability of asymmetric tetraquarks in the minimal-path linear potential

Abstract The linear potential binding a quark and an antiquark in mesons is generalized to baryons and multiquark configurations as the minimal length of flux tubes neutralizing the color, in units of the string tension. For tetraquark systems, i.e., two quarks and two antiquarks, this involves the two possible quark–antiquark pairings, and the Steiner tree linking the quarks to the antiquarks. A novel inequality for this potential demonstrates rigorously that within this model the tetraquark is stable in the limit of large quark-to-antiquark mass ratio.