D-wave effects in heavy quarkonium production in ultraperipheral nuclear collisions

Abstract

The $D$-wave admixture in quarkonium wave functions is acquired from the photonlike structure of $V\to Q\bar Q$ transition in the light-front frame widely used in the literature. Such a $D$-wave ballast is not justified by any nonrelativistic model for $Q-\bar Q$ interaction potential and leads to falsified predictions for the cross sections in heavy quarkonium production in ultra-peripheral nuclear collisions. We analyze this negative role of $D$-wave contribution by comparing with our previous studies based on a simple non-photon-like "$S$-wave-only" $V\to Q\bar Q$ transition in the $Q\bar Q$ rest frame.