Hadronic and Electromagnetic Interactions of Quarkonia

Abstract

We examine the hadronic interactions of quarkonia, focusing on the decays psi(2s)->psi pi pi and upsilon(2s)-> upsilon pi pi. The leading gluonic operators in the multipole expansion are matched onto the chiral lagrangian with the coefficients fit to available data, both at tree-level and loop-level in the chiral expansion. A comparison is made with naive expectations loosely based on the large-$N_c$ limit of QCD in an effort to determine the reliability of this limit for other observables, such as the binding of $\ps$ to nuclei. Crossing symmetry is used to estimate the cross-section for inelastic $\pi\ps\to\pi\pss$ scattering, potentially relevant for heavy ion collisions. The radiative decays psi(2s)->psi pi pi gamma and upsilon(2s)-> upsilon pi pi gamma are determined at tree-level in the chiral lagrangian. Measurement of such decays will provide a test of the multipole and chiral expansions. We briefly discuss decays from the upsilon(3s) and also the contribution from pions to the electromagnetic polarizability of quarkonia.