Local-duality QCD sum rules for strong isospin breaking in the decay constants of heavy-light mesons.

We discuss the leptonic decay constants of heavy-light mesons by means of Borel QCD sum rules in the local-duality (LD) limit of infinitely large Borel mass parameter. In this limit, for an appropriate choice of the invariant structures in the QCD correlation functions, all vacuum-condensate contributions vanish and all nonperturbative effects are contained in only one quantity, the effective threshold. We study properties of the LD effective thresholds in the limits of large heavy-quark mass [Formula: see text] and small light-quark mass [Formula: see text].

Tetraquark and two-meson states at large [Formula: see text].

Considering four-point correlation functions of color-singlet quark bilinears, we investigate, in the large-[Formula: see text] limit of QCD, the subleading diagrams that involve, in the -channel of meson-meson scattering amplitudes, two-quark-two-antiquark intermediate states. The latter contribute, together with gluon exchanges, to the formation, at the hadronic level, of two-meson and tetraquark intermediate states. It is shown that the two-meson contributions, which are predictable, in general, from leading-order [Formula: see text]-behaviors, consistently satisfy the constraints resulting from the [Formula: see text] expansion procedure and thus provide a firm basis for the extraction of tetraquark properties from [Formula: see text]-subleading diagrams.

Universal behavior of the [Formula: see text] transition form factors.

The photon transition form factors of π, η and [Formula: see text] are discussed in view of recent measurements. It is shown that the exact axial anomaly sum rule allows a precise comparison of all three form factors at high-[Formula: see text] independent of the different structures and distribution amplitudes of the participating pseudoscalar mesons. We conclude: (i) The πγ form factor reported by Belle is in excellent agreement with the nonstrange [Formula: see text] component of the η and [Formula: see text] form factors obtained from the BaBar measurements.

OPE, charm-quark mass, and decay constants of D and Ds mesons from QCD sum rules.

We present a sum-rule extraction of the decay constants of the charmed mesons D and Ds from the two-point correlator of pseudoscalar currents. First, we compare the perturbative expansion for the correlator and the decay constant performed in terms of the pole and the running MS¯ masses of the charm quark. The perturbative expansion in terms of the pole mass shows no signs of convergence whereas reorganizing this very expansion in terms of the MS¯ mass leads to a distinct hierarchy of the perturbative expansion.

Nonlocal anomaly of the axial-vector current for bound states.

We argue that the amplitude does not vanish in the limit of zero quark masses. This represents a new kind of violation of the classical equation of motion for the axial current and should be interpreted as the axial anomaly for bound states. The anomaly emerges in spite of the fact that the one loop integrals are ultraviolet finite as guaranteed by the finite size of bound-state wave functions.