The S-wave topped meson

Abstract

Motivated by the recent near-threshold enhancement in top-quark pair production reported by CMS and ATLAS, we study the S-wave spectral structure of heavy-light systems containing a single top quark, namely $t\bar{q}$, $t\bar{c}$, and $t\bar{b}$, within the instantaneous Bethe-Salpeter formalism. Because the top quark decays on a timescale much shorter than the typical hadronization time, the discrete eigenvalues we obtain should be interpreted as model-dependent reference positions of possible quasi-bound heavy-light configurations, rather than as predictions for fully formed conventional hadrons. The numerical results indicate that the masses of these configurations lie close to the top-quark mass. For the $t\bar{b}$ system, the masses of the first four S-wave $0^{-}$ radial states are about $5.1$, $5.4$, $5.6$, and $5.7$~GeV above the top-quark mass, respectively. For the $t\bar{c}$ system, the corresponding values are about $1.9$, $2.2$, $2.5$, and $2.6$~GeV. We also briefly discuss possible production and decay patterns at a qualitative level, which may serve as a reference for future dedicated phenomenological studies or for experimental constraints.