Helicity probabilities for heavy quark fragmentation into heavy-light excited mesons

Abstract

After a brief review on how heavy quark symmetry constraints the helicity fragmentation probabilities for a heavy quark hadronizes into heavy-light hadrons, we present a heavy quark fragmentation model to extract the value for the Falk-Peskin probability $w_{3/2}$ describing the fragmentation of a heavy quark into a heavy-light meson whose light degrees of freedom have angular momentum ${3 \over 2}$. We point out that this probability depends on the longitudinal momentum fraction $z$ of the meson and on its transverse momentum $p_\bot$ relative to the jet axis. In this model, the light degrees of freedom prefer to have their angular momentum aligned transverse to, rather than along, the jet axis. Implications for the production of excited heavy mesons, like $D^{**}$ and $B^{**}$, are briefly discussed.