Approximate degeneracy of heavy-light mesons with the same $L$

TL;DR

This paper investigates the near degeneracy of heavy-light mesons with the same angular momentum, showing it arises from approximate rotational symmetry and is broken at order 1/m_Q, with implications for experimental measurements.

Contribution

It analytically demonstrates the origin of degeneracy in heavy-light mesons and estimates the degree of degeneracy breaking within a relativistic potential model.

Findings

Degeneracy is approximately preserved for heavy-light mesons with the same L.

Breaking of degeneracy is of order 1/m_Q, indicating heavy quark mass dependence.

Experimental spectra can test the predicted degeneracy and its breaking.

Abstract

Careful observation of the experimental spectra of heavy-light mesons tells us that heavy-light mesons with the same angular momentum $L$ are almost degenerate. The estimate is given how much this degeneracy is broken in our relativistic potential model, and it is analytically shown that expectation values of a commutator between the lowest order Hamiltonian and ${\vec L}^{~2}$ are of the order of $1/m_Q$ with a heavy quark mass $m_Q$. It turns out that nonrelativistic approximation of heavy quark system has a rotational symmetry and hence degeneracy among states with the same $L$. This feature can be tested by measuring higher orbitally and radially excited heavy-light meson spectra for $D/D_s/B/B_s$ in LHCb and forthcoming BelleII.