# Strong decays of baryons via quark-antiquark pairs

I have the doubly charmed $\Xi_{cc}^{++}$ consisting of ccu quarks.

This is meant to decay via strong force, producing a light baryon (cud/uuc/udc etc...) and a quark-antiquark pair along with a meson.

I have no idea how this would happen.

My best guess is $ccu \to ccd + \bar{d}s$ but where does the supposed $d\bar{d}$ come in?

Thanks

EDIT: interaction equation was wrong. Supposed to be $ccu \to ccd + \bar{d}u$

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there are two known decay modes, see pdg.lbl.gov/2012/listings/rpp2012-list-xicc-plus.pdf –  Andre Holzner Feb 22 '13 at 14:36
The proposed decay lost a up and gained a strange. Flavor change (and the consequent change of charge) indicates a weak interaction as well as the pair production (and what became of the W?). Are you sure that's what you mean? –  dmckee Feb 22 '13 at 17:11
Sorry guys, I queried the question and it is wrong. It should read $ccu→ccd+\bar{d}u$ However, given that mu = md = 363MeV; ms = 538MeV; mc = 1705MeV how is this interaction kinematically possible? Where does the energy come from? –  Lucidnonsense Feb 22 '13 at 20:57
Never mind about the kinematics, I worked it out! :) –  Lucidnonsense Feb 22 '13 at 21:03
BTW The quark masses you are using there are for the "constituent quark" model, which is a very rough approximation. The real quark masses are known to make up a very small fraction of the baryon mass (up and down each less than 10 MeV) the rest being binding energy. That doesn't make the constituent quark model bad, but you should probably say when you are using it. –  dmckee Feb 23 '13 at 19:09