Light-Front Quark Model Analysis of Electroweak Decays of Pseudoscalar and Vector Mesons

Abstract

We investigate the electroweak form factors and semileptonic decay rates of pseudoscalar and vector mesons using the light-front constituent quark model. Our method of analytic continuation in the Drell-Yan-West (q^+=q^0+q^3=0) frame to obtain the weak form factors avoids the difficulty associated with the contributions from the nonvalence quark-antiquark pair creation. This method seems to provide a promising step forward to handle the exclusive processes in the timelike region. Our calculation reveals that the zero mode contribution is crucial to obtaining the correct values of the light-front current J^{-} in the q^+=0 frame. Our numerical results are overall in a very good agreement with the available exprimental data.

Comments: 205 pages, Ph. D. Thesis