DECAY CONSTANTS OF PSEUDOSCALAR MESONS IN BETHE–SALPETER FRAMEWORK WITH GENERALIZED STRUCTURE OF HADRON-QUARK VERTEX

Abstract

We employ the framework of Bethe–Salpeter equation under Covariant Instantaneous Ansatz to study the leptonic decays of pseudoscalar mesons. The Dirac structure of hadron-quark vertex function Γ is generalized to include various Dirac covariants besides γ5 from their complete set. The covariants are incorporated in accordance with a power counting rule, order-by-order in powers of the inverse of the meson mass. The decay constants are calculated with the incorporation of leading order covariants. Most of the results are dramatically improved.