Thep - \bar p decays ofP-wave quarkonium and the helicity characteristics of massless QCD

We consider the exclusive \(p - \bar p\) decays of the quarkoniumP-states. Due to the helicity conservation of massless QCD the \(p - \bar p\) mode is forbidden in this limit for the¹ P ₁ and the³ P ₀ states. The angular distributions for the decays of the remaining states in the cascade \(^3 S\prime _1 \to \gamma ^3 P_J \to \gamma p\bar p\) are specific to QCD and can serve as a test of the theory. The same is true of the formation process \(p\bar p \to ^3 P_J \to ^3 S_1 \gamma \) . In lowest order QCD we obtain overall branching ratios for charmonium of the order of 10^?4.