Interactions of the doubly charmed state $T_{cc} ^+$ with a hadronic medium

We investigate the absorption and production processes of this new state in a hadronic medium, considering the reactions $T_{cc}^+ \pi, T_{cc}^+ \rho \rightarrow D^{(*)} D^{(*)}$ and the corresponding inverse reactions. We use effective field Lagrangians to account for the couplings between light and heavy mesons, and give special attention to the form factors in the vertices. We calculate here for the first time the $T_{cc}^+ - D - D^*$ form factor derived from QCD sum rules. The results are also obtained by testing widely utilized empirical form factors. The absorption cross sections are found to be larger than the production ones. We compare our results with the only existing estimate of these quantities, presented in a work of J.~Hong, S.~Cho, T.~Song and S.~H.~Lee, in which the authors employed the quasi-free approximation. We find cross sections which are one order of magnitude smaller.