Exclusion of a diquark–anti-diquark structure for the lightest positive-parity charmed mesons

The nature of low-lying scalar and axial-vector charmed mesons has been debated for decades, with hadronic molecular and compact tetraquark models being prominent candidates. These two models predict quite different features for the accessible SU(3) multiplets in the scalar and axial-vector sectors, which can be tested through lattice calculations at SU(3) symmetric points. In this work, we perform lattice calculations for both scalar and axial-vector charmed mesons with an SU(3) symmetric pion mass about 613 MeV for the SU(3) [6] and \([\overline{15}]\) multiplets. We find that the [6] multiplet exhibits attractive interactions in both scalar and axial-vector sectors, while the \([\overline{15}]\) multiplet shows repulsive interactions in both sectors. The energy shifts in the scalar and axial-vector sectors are compatible with each other within uncertainties. These results are fully consistent with the hadronic molecular picture, while challenging the compact tetraquark model, which predicts the existence of low-lying \([\overline{15}]\) states in the axial-vector sector but not in the scalar sector.