The electromagnetic form factors of vector mesons are calculated in an explicitly Poincaré covariant formulation, based on the Dyson-Schwinger equations of QCD, that respects electromagnetic current conservation and unambiguously incorporates effects from vector meson poles in the quark-photon vertex. This method incorporates a two-parameter effective interaction, where the parameters are constrained by the experimental values of chiral condensate and $f_{\pi }$. This approach has successfully described a large amount of light-quark meson experimental data, including ground-state pseudoscalar masses and their electromagnetic form factors and ground-state vector meson masses and strong and electroweak decays. Here we apply it to predict the electromagnetic properties of vector mesons. The results for the static properties of the ρ meson are as follows: charge radius $\langle r_{\rho }^2\rangle =0.54{\mathrm{fm}}^2$, magnetic moment $\mu =2.01$, and quadrupole moment $\mathcal{Q}=-0.41$. We investigate the quark-mass dependence of these static properties and find that our results at the charm quark mass are in agreement with recent lattice simulations. The charge radius decreases with increasing quark mass, but the magnetic moment is almost independent of the quark mass.

• Received 28 March 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.77.025203