Universal description of radially excited heavy and light vector mesons

TL;DR

This paper introduces a universal string-inspired model for meson spectra that generalizes Regge trajectories to include massive quarks, successfully matching known data and enabling quark mass estimation from meson excitations.

Contribution

It presents a novel stringlike framework for mesons that extends linear Regge trajectories to massive quarks, providing a unified description across different meson types.

Findings

Universal relation fits vector meson spectra well

Model predicts new meson excitations

Quark masses can be inferred from spectra

Abstract

A new qualitative stringlike picture for mesons is proposed which leads to a simple and intuitively clear generalization of linear radial Regge trajectories to the case of massive quarks. The obtained universal relation is successfully tested in the sector of unflavored vector mesons, where many radial excitations are known. Some new predictions are given. Our results suggest that the quark masses can be easily estimated from the spectra of radially excited mesons.