Abstract
A Bethe-Salpeter (BS) treatment of proposed recently for equal-mass quarks in the instantaneous approximation is extended to unequal masses. An explicit mass formula is obtained in the dimensionless form , where , a nonlinear function of , represents a central supermultiplet for each excitation, formally corrected for spin and flavor variations among members. These universality features of are borne out by the data to a significant extent up to the charmed sector, in terms of a single reduced spring constant (=0.15 GeV) and the quark masses (). A fully covariant and transparent construction is found for the Bethe-Salpeter wave functions for , , and mesons consistent with their equations of motion and satisfying the BS normalization without the need for a conventional decomposition into (±±) components. Tests of these wave functions are offered through the predictions of (a) , and decays, (b) electromagnetic radii of mesons, and (c) weak form factor in decay, all in excellent agreement with experiment, without extra parameters.
- Received 12 June 1981
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.26.3123
©1982 American Physical Society