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Heavy quarkonium decay $V \to g g g$ with both relativistic and QCD radiative corrections

Hong-Mei Jiang ¹, Chao-Jie Fan ^1,2,*, Jun-Kang He ^1,2,†, and Cui Kong ^1,‡

¹College of Physics and Electronic Science, Hubei Normal University, Huangshi 435002, China
²Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (MOE), Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China

^*Contact author: fancj@hbnu.edu.cn
^†Contact author: hejk@hbnu.edu.cn
^‡Contact author: cuikong@hbnu.edu.cn

Phys. Rev. D 112, 114014 – Published 4 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/n9g6-1dfj

Abstract

In the heavy quarkonium decay process $V \to g g g$ ( $V = J / ψ, ϒ$ ), making a definite prediction including relativistic corrections has so far remained a significant challenge. In this work, we study this decay process by taking into account the relativistic corrections in the Bethe-Salpeter formalism, where the relativistic bound-state wave function of quarkonium is obtained by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation under the covariant instantaneous ansatz. Through analytical calculation, we find that some polarized decay widths vanish due to the helicity selection rule, which suppresses the corresponding helicity amplitudes. Owing to helicity flip symmetry and phase space symmetry, the nonvanishing polarized decay widths are not all independent; they are related through a set of symmetry relations. Then we obtain the unpolarized decay width formula $Γ (V \to g g g) = \frac{80 (π^{2} - 9) α_{s}^{3} N_{V}^{2} β_{V}^{3}}{81 π^{9 / 2} M} (1 - κ \frac{β_{V}^{2}}{M^{2}})$ , where the factor $κ \frac{β_{V}^{2}}{M^{2}}$ arises from the relativistic corrections with $κ \equiv \frac{3 (112 + 25 π^{2})}{16 (π^{2} - 9)}$ . Furthermore, including both relativistic and QCD radiative corrections within the factorization assumption, our predictions of $B (V \to g g g)$ and $B (V \to e^{+} e^{-})$ agree well with their experimental data. As a crossing check, with the experimental value of the ratio $R_{V} = \frac{Γ (V \to g g g)}{Γ (V \to e^{+} e^{-})}$ and our result for $R_{V}$ , we extract $α_{s} (M_{J / ψ} / 2) = 0.31$ and $α_{s} (M_{ϒ} / 2) = 0.20$ , respectively.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 114014– Published 4 December, 2025

Vol. 112, Iss. 11 — 1 December 2025

Received 23 September 2025
Accepted 19 November 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/n9g6-1dfj

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP³.

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Heavy quarkonium decay $V \to g g g$ with both relativistic and QCD radiative corrections

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Heavy quarkonium decay V→ggg with both relativistic and QCD radiative corrections

Abstract

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

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References (58)

Heavy quarkonium decay $V \to g g g$ with both relativistic and QCD radiative corrections