On the radiative decays of light vector and axial-vector mesons

Abstract

We study the light vector and axial-vector mesons. According to the hadrogenesis conjecture the nature of the two types of states is distinct. The axial-vector mesons are generated dynamically by coupled-channel interactions based on the chiral Lagrangian written down in terms of the Goldstone bosons and the light vector mesons. We propose a novel counting scheme that arises if the chiral Lagrangian is supplemented by constraints from large- N c QCD in the hadrogenesis conjecture. The counting scheme is successfully tested by a systematic study of the properties of vector mesons. The spectrum of light axial-vector mesons is derived relying on the leading order interaction of the Goldstone bosons with the vector mesons supplemented by phenomenological correction terms. The f 1 ( 1282 ) , b 1 ( 1230 ) , h 1 ( 1386 ) , a 1 ( 1230 ) and K 1 ( 1272 ) mesons are recovered as molecular states. Based on those results the one-loop contributions to the electromagnetic decay amplitudes of axial-vector molecules into pseudo-scalar or vector mesons are evaluated systematically. In order to arrive at gauge invariant results in a transparent manner we choose to represent the vector particles by anti-symmetric tensor fields. At present we restrict ourselves to loops where a vector and a pseudo-scalar meson couple to the axial-vector molecule. We argue that final and predictive results require further computations involving intermediate states with two vector mesons. The relevance of the latter is predicted by our counting rules.