Two-photon and two-gluon decays of p-wave heavy quarkonium using a covariant light-front approach

TL;DR

This paper investigates two-photon and two-gluon decay processes of p-wave heavy quarkonia using a covariant light-front approach, deriving decay rates that align with experimental data for charmonium but show discrepancies for bottomonium.

Contribution

It introduces a covariant light-front framework to calculate annihilation rates of p-wave heavy quarkonia without free parameters, providing new theoretical insights.

Findings

Decay widths for charmonium agree with experimental data.

Significant discrepancies found in bottomonium decay width calculations.

Method offers a parameter-free approach within the covariant light-front formalism.

Abstract

In this paper, a study of two-photon and two-gluon decays in the context of p-wave heavy quarkonia is presented. Within the covariant light-front framework, the annihilation rates of scalar and tensor quarkonium states are derived. In the absence of free parameters in this case, the results for the charmonium decay widths are consistent with the experimental data. However, in comparison to other theoretical calculations, there are large discrepancies in our results regarding bottomonia.