The interaction of slow J/psi and psi' with nucleons

Abstract

The interaction of the charmonium resonances J/psi and psi' with nucleons at low energies is considered using the multipole expansion and low-energy theorems in QCD. A lower bound is established for the relevant gluonic operator average over the nucleon. As a result we find the discussed interaction to be significantly stronger than previously estimated in the literature. In particular we conclude that the cross section of the J/psi - nucleon elastic scattering at the threshold is very likely to exceed 17 millibarn and that existence of bound states of the J/psi in light nuclei is possible. For the psi' resonance we estimate even larger elastic scattering cross section and also a very large cross section of the process psi'+N -> psi+N giving rise to the decay width of tens of MeV for the psi' resonance in heavy nuclei.