Covariant spectator theory of quark-antiquark bound states: Mass spectra and vertex functions of heavy and heavy-light mesons

TL;DR

This paper employs the covariant spectator theory with an effective quark-antiquark interaction to accurately compute the mass spectra and vertex functions of heavy and heavy-light mesons, analyzing the impact of different confining interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic study of the influence of vector confining interactions and quark masses on meson spectra within the covariant spectator framework, including parameter sensitivity analysis.

Findings

Meson mass spectra agree well with experimental data.

Vector confining contributions between 0% and 30% yield similar results.

Light quark masses are not tightly constrained by the data.

Abstract

We use the covariant spectator theory with an effective quark-antiquark interaction, containing Lorentz scalar, pseudoscalar, and vector contributions, to calculate the masses and vertex functions of, simultaneously, heavy and heavy-light mesons. We perform least-square fits of the model parameters, including the quark masses, to the meson spectrum and systematically study the sensitivity of the parameters with respect to different sets of fitted data. We investigate the influence of the vector confining interaction by using a continuous parameter controlling its weight. We find that vector contributions to the confining interaction between 0% and about 30% lead to essentially the same agreement with the data. Similarly, the light quark masses are not very tightly constrained. In all cases, the meson mass spectra calculated with our fitted models agree very well with the experimental data. We also calculate the mesons wave functions in a partial wave representation and show how they are related to the meson vertex functions in covariant form.