A new description of hadronic bound states consisting of a single heavy quark (or antiquark) and one or more light quarks (or antiquarks), in which the heavy quark is treated as an infinitely massive, nonrelativistic object situated at the center of a spherical cavity, is proposed. Because of the absence to a large extent of center-of-mass corrections, which are quite large in the traditional model, a cleaner phenomenological description of systems containing a heavy quark should result. As a preliminary application, the spectrum of charmed mesons and their strong and electromagnetic branching ratios are computed. Directions for future applications of this model are discussed.

• Received 20 August 1984

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.31.1081