Approximate degeneracy of heavy-light mesons with the same $L$

Abstract

Careful observation of the experimental spectra of heavy-light mesons tells us that heavy-light mesons with the same angular momentum $L$ are almost degenerate. The estimate is given how much this degeneracy is broken in our relativistic potential model, and it is analytically shown that expectation values of a commutator between the lowest order Hamiltonian and ${\vec L}^{~2}$ are of the order of $1/m_Q$ with a heavy quark mass $m_Q$. It turns out that nonrelativistic approximation of heavy quark system has a rotational symmetry and hence degeneracy among states with the same $L$. This feature can be tested by measuring higher orbitally and radially excited heavy-light meson spectra for $D/D_s/B/B_s$ in LHCb and forthcoming BelleII.