Hadron spectroscopy provides a unique tool to understand QCD in the non-perturbative region. Over the past half century, many hadronic states have been experimentally observed and corresponding theoretical models have been elaborated to explain them, but no unambiguous interpretation exists. With the advent of LHCb, the enormous heavy-flavor production cross-sections at the LHC have helped revolutionize progress in the field. New exotic tetra- and pentaquark states in the heavy quark sector that do not fit into the conventional models are being discovered at a rapid pace. The trend promises to continue in the coming years, towards the High-Luminosity LHC era.
Spectroscopy studies can also play a decisive role in interpretation of recent flavor anomalies in rare b-hadron decays, to understand the hadronic component and disentangle the long- and short-distance scale physics.
At the cusp of the LHC restarting data-taking in 2022, the workshop aims to bring together experts from experimental and theory communities to plan and prepare for the path ahead. This includes development of theory models to better control systematics in the experimental analyses, common HEP software tools for large-scale fits and improvements in lattice QCD calculations. We expect valuable discussions on both conventional and exotic spectroscopy in the context of cross-experiment amplitude analyses and foster new collaborations between theory and experiment.