Distribution amplitudes of heavy mesons and quarkonia on the light front

Abstract

The ladder kernel of the Bethe–Salpeter equation is amended by introducing a different flavor dependence of the dressing functions in the heavy-quark sector. Compared with earlier work this allows for the simultaneous calculation of the mass spectrum and leptonic decay constants of light pseudoscalar mesons, the $D_u$, $D_s$, $B_u$, $B_s$ and $B_c$ mesons and the heavy quarkonia ${\eta }_c$ and ${\eta }_b$ within the same framework at a physical pion mass. The corresponding Bethe–Salpeter amplitudes are projected onto the light front and we reconstruct the distribution amplitudes of the mesons in the full theory. A comparison with the first inverse moment of the heavy meson distribution amplitude in heavy quark effective theory is made.