Meson decays and the DKP equation

Abstract

It has been argued that the Duffin-Kemmer-Petiau (DKP) description of mesons fails in predicting meson decay rates and the strong-interaction $\frac{D}{F}$ ratio, while the Klein-Gordon (KG) description succeeds. It is shown here that these arguments are deficient in three respects: (a) The various dynamical assumptions used in comparing the DKP and the KG descriptions preclude a rigorous test of their relative merits at present, except in some particularly simple cases; (b) if the same phenomenological freedom were used in the two descriptions the results could be made similar; and (c) actually, when worked out systematically on the basis of a Lagrangian formalism, it is the DKP rather than the KG description which can extract a consistent strong-interaction $\frac{D}{F}$ ratio.