Light Quark Mass Dependence in Heavy Quarkonium Physics

The issue of chiral extrapolations in heavy quarkonium systems is discussed. We show that the light quark mass dependence of the properties of heavy quarkonia is not always suppressed. For quarkonia close to an open flavor threshold, even a nonanalytic chiral extrapolation is needed. Both these nontrivial facts are demonstrated to appear in the decay widths of the hindered M1 transitions between the first radially excited and ground state P-wave charmonia. The results at a pion mass of about 500 MeV could deviate from the value at the physical pion mass by a factor of two. Our findings show the necessity of performing chiral extrapolations for lattice simulations of heavy quarkonium systems. Furthermore, lattice calculations of these transitions would also provide a definite answer to the role of coupled-channel effects in heavy quarkonium physics due to virtual heavy mesons.