2025/12/18 by Li, Shuang-Hong, Lai, Wei-Yang, Jin, Hong-Ying
#FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.16637
We present a systematic study of the masses of light excited qq mesons using QCD sum rules at next-to-leading order (NLO). To probe excited states, we construct several interpolating currents involving covariant derivatives. The calculation is carried out up to dimension-8 condensates, including NLO perturbative and m⟨qq⟩ corrections. Employing Gaussian sum rules, we obtain several JP=2^± nonets with masses agreeing well with experiments. Several J=0,1 states compatible with experiments are also obtained using both Gaussian and Laplace sum rules. In particular, the JP=2+ current couples to two distinct JP=2+ resonances. This work demonstrates the efficacy of operators with covariant derivatives for studying excited hadrons.