Quarkonia

Abstract

In the second part of this book we are going to consider hadronic bound-states. We will at first discuss the properties of mesons and baryons. The simplest example are heavy quark-antiquark ($$\mathrm{c\overline{c}}$$and $$\mathrm{b\overline{b}}$$) pairs, which are known as quarkonia. Due to the large quark masses they may be approximately treated in a nonrelativistic manner. The hydrogen atom and positronium will serve as electromagnetic analogues. The relative positions of the quarkonia’s energy levels are used to determine the potential and the coupling constant of the strong interaction.