Spectra and decays of pi pi and pi K atoms

Abstract

We describe the spectra and decays of pi pi and pi K atoms within a non-relativistic effective field theory. The evaluations of the energy shifts and widths are performed at next-to-leading order in isospin symmetry breaking. We provide general formulae for all S-states, and discuss the states with angular momentum one in some detail. The prediction for the lifetime of the pi K atom in its ground-state yields tau = (3.7 \pm 0.4) * 10^{-15} sec.

Comments: 37 pages, 6 figures