Systematic errors of transition form factors extracted by means of light-cone sum rules

TL;DR

This study investigates the systematic errors in extracting heavy-to-light transition form factors using light-cone sum rules, revealing significant off-light cone contributions that cause a 20-30% discrepancy.

Contribution

The paper provides a detailed analysis of off-light cone effects in form factor extraction, highlighting their non-negligible impact compared to traditional light-cone approximations.

Findings

Off-light cone contributions are comparable to light-cone contributions.

The difference in form factor values is about 20-30%.

Light-cone sum rules may underestimate form factors due to these effects.

Abstract

This talk presents results of our study of heavy-to-light transition form factors extracted with the help of light-cone sum rules. We employ a model with scalar particles interacting via massless-boson exchange and study the heavy-to-light correlator, relevant for the extraction of the transition form factor. We calculate this correlator in two different ways: by making use of the Bethe-Salpeter wave function of the light bound state and by making use of the light-cone expansion. This allows us to calculate the full correlator and separately the light-cone contribution to it. In this way we show that the off-light cone contributions are not suppressed compared to the light-cone one by any large parameter. Numerically, the difference between the value of the form factor extracted from the full correlator and from the light-cone contribution to this correlator is found to be about 20-30% in a wide range of masses of the particles involved in the decay process.