Suppression of the S-wave production of (3/2)^+ + (1/2)^- heavy meson pairs in e^+e^- annihilation

Abstract

The heavy meson-antimeson pairs, where one is an excited $\bigl ({3 \over 2} \bigr) ^+ $ meson and the other is a ground state $\bigl ({1 \over 2} \bigr) ^-$ meson, namely the pairs ($D_1(2420) \bar D$ + c.c.), ($D_1(2420) \bar D^*$ + c.c.), ($D_2(2460) \bar D^*$ + c.c.) in the charm sector and ($B_1(5721) \bar B$ + c.c.), ($B_1(5721) \bar B^*$ + c.c.), ($B_2(5747) \bar B^*$ + c.c.) in the bottom sector, are allowed, by the quantum numbers, to be produced in the $S$ wave in $e^+e^-$ annihilation. We show, however, that such $S$-wave production is forbidden by the heavy quark spin symmetry. Thus the yield of the considered meson pairs in $e^+e^-$ annihilation should be significantly suppressed near the respective thresholds. In our view, this substantially weakens the arguments for considering the Y(4260) charmonium-like resonance as a $D_1 \bar D$ molecular state.