Weak decays of singly heavy baryons: the $$1/2\rightarrow 3/2$$ case

Abstract This work is devoted to investigating the $$1/2\rightarrow 3/2$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> weak decays of singly heavy baryons. Due to the orthogonality between the spin wavefunctions of antitriplet baryons and spin-3/2 baryons, the weak decay amplitude for such processes vanishes at the leading order of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Consequently, this study exclusively examines the weak decays of $$\Omega _{Q}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>Ω</mml:mi> <mml:mi>Q</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:math> . Using the light-front approach under the three-quark picture, we first extract the relevant form factors, and then apply them to investigate corresponding semileptonic and nonleptonic decays. Finally, we compare our phenomenological predictions with existing results in the literature. Our findings are expected to be helpful in experimentally establishing these decay channels.