D-wave effects in heavy quarkonium production in ultraperipheral nuclear collisions

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the impact of D-wave admixture in quarkonium production models, revealing that photon-like transition assumptions lead to inaccurate cross section predictions in ultraperipheral nuclear collisions.

Contribution

It challenges the common use of photon-like D-wave contributions in quarkonium models, proposing a non-photon-like S-wave approach for more accurate predictions.

Findings

Photon-like D-wave assumptions lead to incorrect cross sections.

Non-photon-like S-wave models align better with previous studies.

D-wave effects can negatively influence quarkonium production predictions.

Abstract

The $D$-wave admixture in quarkonium wave functions is acquired from the photonlike structure of $V\to Q\bar Q$ transition in the light-front frame widely used in the literature. Such a $D$-wave ballast is not justified by any nonrelativistic model for $Q-\bar Q$ interaction potential and leads to falsified predictions for the cross sections in heavy quarkonium production in ultra-peripheral nuclear collisions. We analyze this negative role of $D$-wave contribution by comparing with our previous studies based on a simple non-photon-like "$S$-wave-only" $V\to Q\bar Q$ transition in the $Q\bar Q$ rest frame.