Hadronic Atoms in QCD

Abstract

We propose a non relativistic effective Lagrangian approach to study hadronic atom observables in the framework of QCD (including photons). We apply our formalism to derive a general expression for the width of the pi+pi- atom decaying into two neutral pions. It contains all terms at leading and next-to-leading order in isospin breaking. The result allows one to evaluate the combination a0-a2 of pi-pi S-wave scattering lengths from pi+pi- atom lifetime measurements, like the one presently performed by the DIRAC expeiment at CERN.