Renormalons in Electromagnetic Annihilation Decays of Quarkonium

Abstract

We study the large-order asymptotic behavior of the perturbation series for short-distance coefficients in the NRQCD factorization formulas for the decays J/psi --> e^+e^- and eta_c --> gamma gamma. The short-distance coefficients of the leading matrix elements are calculated to all orders in the large-N_f limit. We find that there is a universal Borel resummable renormalon associated with the cancellation of the Coulomb singularity in the short-distance coefficients. We verify that the ambiguities in the short-distance coefficients from the first infrared renormalon are canceled by ambiguities in the nonperturbative NRQCD matrix elements that contribute through relative order v^2. Our results are used to estimate the coefficients of higher order radiative corrections in the decay rates for J/psi --> e^+ e^-, eta_c --> gamma gamma, and J/ψ--> gamma gamma gamma.