Four-quark states may exist as colorless meson-meson molecules or compact systems with two-body colored components. We derive an analytical procedure to expand an arbitrary four-quark wave function in terms of nonorthogonal color singlet-singlet vectors. Using this expansion we develop the necessary formalism to evaluate the probability of physical components with an arbitrary four-quark wave function. Its application to characterize bound and unbound four-quark states as meson-meson, molecular, or compact systems is discussed

• Received 6 May 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.80.035204