Hadronic resonances enhanced by thresholds

Abstract We present a neat example of a meson–baryon system where the vicinity of two different thresholds enhances the binding of a hadronic resonance, a pentaquark. As a consequence the pattern of states may change when moving among different flavor sectors, what poses a warning on naive extrapolations to heavy flavor sectors based on systematic expansions. For this purpose we simultaneously analyze the N D ¯ and NB two-hadron systems looking for possible bound states or resonances. When a resonance is controlled by a coupled-channel effect, going to a different flavor sector may enhance or diminish the binding. This effect may, for example, generate significant differences between the charmonium and bottomonium spectra above open-flavor thresholds or pentaquark states in the open-charm and open-bottom sectors.