Delineating neutral and charged mesons in magnetic fields

TL;DR

This paper analyzes neutral and charged mesons in magnetic fields using a non-relativistic quark model, revealing distinct behaviors and stability mechanisms across different field strengths.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical study of meson properties in magnetic fields, highlighting differences between neutral and charged mesons and effects of spin and dimensionality reduction.

Findings

Neutral mesons have continuous transverse momenta; charged mesons exhibit quantized transverse dynamics.

Zeeman effects are balanced by internal energy contributions for high-spin charged mesons.

Strong magnetic fields effectively reduce meson dimensionality, affecting their stability and properties.

Abstract

We investigate the properties of neutral and charged mesons in magnetic fields, from weak-field to strong-field regimes. To develop analytic insights, we employ a non-relativistic quark model with a confining potential of the harmonic oscillator type. Short-range correlations, such as Coulomb and color-magnetic interactions, are treated as perturbations. In particular, we focus on the magnetic field dependence of the relative and the center-of-mass motions. The qualitative trends differ significantly between neutral and charged mesons: for neutral mesons, the transverse momenta are conserved and continuous, while charged mesons exhibit quantized transverse dynamics. The Zeeman effects, arising from intrinsic spins and orbital angular momenta, are carefully examined. In particular, for charged mesons with spins $s\ge 1$, we discuss how the zero-point energy in the internal quark motion cancels the Zeeman energy from the orbital angular momentum, ensuring the energetic stability of mesons with high spins. The effectively reduced dimensionality of these mesons in the strong-field limit is also discussed.