Constructive evidence for flavor independence of the quark-antiquark potential

Abstract

The masses and leptonic widths of vector mesons may be used to construct quark-antiquark potentials by means of an inverse-scattering method. This technique has been applied to the charmonium system. A corresponding potential has been constructed from $\ensuremath{\Upsilon}$ and ${\ensuremath{\Upsilon}}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ and found to be in substantial agreement with that constructed from $\ensuremath{\psi}$ and ${\ensuremath{\psi}}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ if the $\ensuremath{\Upsilon}$ is composed of a charge $\ensuremath{-}\frac{1}{3}$ quark and the corresponding antiquark. This agreement may be interpreted as evidence for flavor independence of the quark-antiquark potential. Predictions for a hypothetical $\ensuremath{\zeta}$ family of higher-lying vector mesons also are noted.