Exact-propagator instantaneous Bethe-Salpeter equation for quark-antiquark bound states

Abstract

Recently, an instantaneous approximation to the Bethe-Salpeter formalism for the analysis of bound states in quantum field theory has been proposed which retains, in contrast to the Salpeter equation, as far as possible the exact propagators of the bound-state constituents, extracted nonperturbatively from Dyson-Schwinger equations or lattice gauge theory. The implications of this improvement for the solutions of this bound-state equation, that is, the spectrum of the mass eigenvalues of its bound states and the corresponding wave functions, when considering the quark propagators arising in quantum chromodynamics are explored.