The pionium lifetime in generalized chiral perturbation theory

Abstract

Pionium lifetime corrections to the nonrelativistic formula are calculated in the framework of the quasipotential-constraint theory approach. The calculation extends an earlier evaluation, made in the scheme of standard chiral perturbation theory, to the scheme of generalized chiral perturbation theory, in which the quark condensate is left as a free parameter. The pionium lifetime is calculated as a function of the combination $(a_0^0-a_0^2)$ of the $\pi\pi$ S-wave scattering lengths with isospin I=0,2.