Predicting the Masses of Heavy Hadrons without an Explicit Hamiltonian

Abstract

There are striking regularities in the masses and mass differences of known hadrons. Some of these regularities can be understood from known general properties of the interactions of quarks without a need to specify the explicit form of the Hamiltonian. The Feynman--Hellmann theorem is one of the tools providing this understanding. If the mass regularities are exploited, predictions can be made of the masses of as yet undiscovered hadrons. In particular, it is found that the mass of the $B_c^*$ is $6320\pm 20$ MeV. Predictions concerning i) excited vector mesons, ii) pseudoscalar mesons, iii) $P$-wave mesons, and iv) ground-state spin 1/2 and 3/2 baryons are also made.