Electromagnetism in Quark-Antiquark Bound States

Abstract

Non-perturbative proof is presented of a unique version of Goldstone theorem, that electromagnetism contributes to the masses of spinless particles of quark-antiquark bound states in the form of a commutator of the quark electric matrix and a coefficient factor which may be expressed simply in terms of a three-body Bethe-Salpeter amplitude, in the case where the Lagrangian conserves an approximate $SU(3)$ chiral symmetry. The coupled Bethe-Salpeter equation and Dyson-Schwinger equation in the ladder-rainbow approximation are layed out with every ingredient renormalized, which are applied to the problem of evaluating the mass differences of some charged and neutral pseudoscalar and vector mesons. The numerical results yield satisfactory agreement with experimental observations for the mass spectrum and meson decay constants. Estimates of the light quark masses are also given in the Bethe-Salpeter formalism.