Revisiting radiative decays of $1^{+-}$ heavy quarkonia in the covariant light-front approach

Abstract: We revisit the calculation of the width for the radiative decay of a $1^{+-}$ heavy $Q \bar Q$ meson via the channel $1^{+-} \to 0^{-+} +\gamma$ in the covariant light-front quark model. We carry out the reduction of the light-front amplitude in the non-relativistic limit, explicitly computing the leading and next-to-leading order relativistic corrections. This shows the consistency of the light-front approach with the non-relativistic formula for this electric dipole transition. Furthermore, the theoretical uncertainty in the predicted width is studied as a function of the inputs for the heavy quark mass and wavefunction structure parameter. We analyze the specific decays $h_{c}(1P) \to \eta_{c}(1S) + \gamma$ and $h_{b}(1P) \to \eta_{b}(1S) + \gamma$. We compare our results with experimental data and with other theoretical predictions from calculations based on non-relativistic models and their extensions to include relativistic effects, finding reasonable agreement.