Physics Letters B 761 (2016) 184–189
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
On enhanced corrections from quasi-degenerate states to heavy
quarkonium observables
Y. Kiyo
a
, G. Mishima
b,∗
, Y. Sumino
b
a
Department of Physics, Juntendo University, Inzai, Chiba 270-1695, Japan
b
Department of Physics, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-8578, Japan
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
27 July 2016
Accepted
11 August 2016
Available
online 18 August 2016
Editor:
J. Hisano
It is well known that in perturbation theory existence of quasi-degenerate states can rearrange the order
counting. For a heavy quarkonium system, naively, enhanced effects (l-changing mixing effects) could
contribute already to the first-order and third-order corrections to the wave function and the energy
level, respectively, in expansion in α
s
. We present a formulation and note that the corresponding (lowest-
order)
corrections vanish due to absence of the relevant off-diagonal matrix elements. As a result, in
the quarkonium energy level and leptonic decay width, the enhanced effects are expected to appear,
respectively, in the fifth- and fourth-order corrections and beyond.
© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
Heavy quarkonium, the bound state of a heavy quark–antiquark pair, is a prime example of a strongly interacting system whose
properties are well documented in perturbative QCD. With the advent of new theoretical framework, such as effective field theory (EFT)
and threshold expansion technique, as well as proper treatment for decoupling infrared degrees of freedom, the heavy quarkonium system
has become an ideal laboratory for precision tests of predictions of perturbative QCD with respect to various experimental data and lattice
QCD predictions.
The
state-of-the-art computational results in this field comprise the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (NNNLO) energy levels of
heavy quarkonium [1–3], the NNNLO pair-production cross section of heavy quarks near threshold [4,5], and the leptonic decay width
of ϒ(1S) state [6]. These calculations utilize the modern EFT, potential-nonrelativistic QCD (pNRQCD) [7,8], for systematically organiz-
ing
the perturbative expansions in α
s
and v (velocity of heavy quarks) in a sophisticated manner. This EFT describes interactions of a
non-relativistic quantum mechanical system (dictated by the Schrödinger equation) with ultrasoft gluons, which is organized in multipole
expansion. We can benefit from methods and knowledge of perturbation theory of quantum mechanics therein.
It
is widely known that quasi-degenerate systems need special care in perturbation theory of quantum mechanics [9], however, thus
far the relevant consideration seems to be missing in the computation of the aforementioned NNNLO heavy quarkonium observables.
1
In perturbative expansion of the heavy quarkonium system, the leading-order Hamiltonian is that of the Coulomb system whose energy
eigenvalues are labeled only by the principal quantum number n. The first-order correction resolves the degeneracy in the orbital angular
momentum l, while the second-order correction resolves the degeneracy in the total spin s and total angular momentum j. Once these
features are properly taken into account in perturbative calculations there are enhanced contributions which rearrange the order counting.
These are the mixing effects between different l states for the same n. One finds that naively these start from the third-order corrections
to the heavy quarkonium energy levels and from the first-order corrections to the wave functions.
2
The latter would induce second-order
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
address: g_mishima@tuhep.phys.tohoku.ac.jp (G. Mishima).
1
In the computation of the NNLO energy levels the corrections from quasi-degenerate states for the n ≤3states were explicitly considered and found to be absent [10].
2
As a simple example, consider a matrix
0 x
2
V
2
x
2
V
∗
2
xV
1
.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2016.08.026
0370-2693/
© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.