The discovery and properties of pentaquarks

The pentaquarks are exotic baryons formed of four quarks and an antiquarks. Their existence has been discussed in the literature over the last 30 years or more, first in connection with kaon nucleon scattering data. The subject has been revived by the end of 2002 when experimental evidence of a narrow baryon of strangeness S = +1, and mass M similar or equal to 1530 MeV has been found. This is interpreted as the lightest member of an SU(3)-flavor antidecuplet. Here we shall mainly review the predictions of pentaquark properties as e.g. mass, spin and parity, within constituent quark models. Both light and heavy pentaquarks will be presented.