Phenomenology of Heavy Quarkonia and Quantum Chromodynamics

Heavy quarkonia, the cc, b(')b, and soon to be discovered t(')t families of states, are studied in the framework of potential theory. The earlier proposed, flavor independent "Riverside"-potential is fit to masses of cc and b(')b states and their electronic widths are calculated. An unusual feature of the potential is the use of a parameter b which controls the small r or "asymptotic freedom" behavior and which can be related to the QCD scale parameter (LAMDA)(,MS). This param- eter b is virtually undetermined by the cc and b(')b spectra, merely excluding the range b < 4 or (LAMDA)(,MS) < 120MeV and slightly favoring (LAMDA)(,MS) (DBLTURN) 250MeV. It is shown how even minimal information on the t(')t states will restrict the (LAMDA)(,MS) value to a range of the order of 50MeV. A recent Lattice Gauge potential shows a remarkable closeness to the phenomenological approach. In view of the approximations involved, the difference between the two potentials is small. This difference is investigated in terms of the strong coupling constant (alpha) which can be extracted from both potentials. In the main r regime the Lattice Gauge (alpha) is markedly smaller than the phenomenological one. It is shown that the absence of intermediate, virtual quark loops in the Lattice Gauge calculation, i.e. the so-called quenched approximation, accounts for at least some and possibly most of that difference. Overall, the phenomenology of heavy quarkonia as studied in this work is in no conflict with QCD.