Heavy mesons from the QCD instanton vacuum beyond the static limit
arXiv:2606.28702
Abstract
We study pseudoscalar heavy mesons in the QCD instanton vacuum beyond the static limit. Finite-mass effects in the heavy-light loop are encoded in a separable effective vertex built from a profile function , kept distinct from the static Wilson-line form factor of the limit. The pseudoscalar two-point function fixes the residual mass and the residue-normalized meson-quark coupling, from which we evaluate the decay constant and the spin-independent kinetic matrix element including the retained derivative and kinetic contributions. The Isgur-Wise function is evaluated separately in the static heavy-quark limit, and its zero-recoil slope is extracted by using the same residue-normalized heavy-light vertex. The subleading calculation is restricted to the kinetic (derivative) part of the HQET operators. For a representative vertex, calibrated at fixed to the leading-order decay constant and the spin-averaged mass , we obtain and , , , and . The kinetic contribution yields a mass shift of order and a sizable partial correction, indicating that the spin-independent nonperturbative sector is a sensitive probe of the finite-mass heavy-light vertex.
arXiv comment16 pages, 2 figures