Excited Charmonium Decays by Flux-Tube Breaking and the $\psi^{'}$ Anomaly at CDF

Abstract

The hadronic decay of radially and orbitally excited charmonium above charm threshold by $^3 P_{0}$ pair creation and chromoelectric flux--tube breaking is discussed in an harmonic oscillator approximation. We find independent evidence from a study of widths for a 2S admixture in the predominantly 1D state $\psi(3770)$, and explore the possibility of metastable radially excited $2 \; ^{3}P_{0,1,2}$ states being a source of the anomalously large production of $\psi^{'}$ at the Tevatron. At least one of them is expected to be narrow as a consequence of the existence of nodes in the radial wave function.