Differences between heavy and light quarks

Abstract

The quark Dyson-Schwinger equation shows that there are distinct differences between light and heavy quarks. The dynamical mass function of the light quarks is characterised by a sharp increase below 1 GeV, whereas the mass function of the heavy quarks is approximately constant in this infrared region. As a consequence, the heavy-meson masses increase linearly with the current-quark masses, whereas the light pseudoscalar meson masses are proportional to the square root of the current-quark masses.

Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures, Contribution to the IVth International Workshop on Progress in Heavy Quark Physics, 20-22 Sept. 1997, Rostock