Towards a relativistic description of exotic meson decays

Abstract

This work analyzes hadronic decays of exotic mesons, with a focus on the lightest one, the ${J}^{PC}={1}^{\ensuremath{-}+}$ ${\ensuremath{\pi}}_{1}$, in a fully relativistic formalism, and makes comparisons with nonrelativistic results. We also discuss Coulomb gauge decays of normal mesons that proceed through their hybrid components. The relativistic spin wave functions of mesons and hybrids are constructed based on unitary representations of the Lorentz group. The radial wave functions are obtained from phenomenological considerations of the mass operator. Fully relativistic results (with Wigner rotations) differ significantly from nonrelativistic ones. We also find that the decay channels ${\ensuremath{\pi}}_{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\pi}{b}_{1},\ensuremath{\pi}{f}_{1},K{K}_{1}$ are favored, in agreement with results obtained using other models.