Isospin violation in the yield ofS-wave heavy meson pairs near threshold

Abstract

We consider production of overall neutral pairs consisting of heavy $D^{(*)}$ or $B^{(*)}$ meson and antimeson in the processes, where the pair can be created in an $S$-wave, such as $e^+e^- \to \pi^0 \, D^* \bar D^{(*)}$ and $e^+e^- \to \gamma \, D^{(*)} \bar D^{(*)}$, and similar reactions with $B^{(*)}$ mesons. The ratio $R^{c/n}$ of the yield of pairs of charged mesons to that of neutral mesons near the threshold for the heavy pair is strongly affected by the isospin breaking due to the isotopic mass differences and due to the Coulomb interaction between the charged mesons. The actual behavior of the isospin breaking in $R^{c/n}$ is also sensitive to the strong interaction between the heavy mesons, so that experimental measurement of this ratio can be used as a probe of this strong interaction. We calculate $R^{c/n}$ at and very near the threshold in terms of the isotopic scattering lengths for the meson pairs. In particular we find that the yield of pairs of charged mesons does not go to zero at exactly the threshold, but rather starts with a finite step, whose height depends on the value of the scattering length in a particular channel.