The radiative decays of the ground $S$-wave and the first excited $P$-wave mesons in light-quark $q\overline{q}$ systems are investigated in the covariant oscillator quark model. An important feature of this scheme is that the effective electromagnetic currents for respective processes, which are manifestly covariant and conserved, are given in a unified and systematic way. The results for the $S$-wave mesons seem to be in good agreement with experiment, and the results for the $P$-wave mesons are satisfactory, as far as the present poor experiments are concerned, except for the process $b_1^{+}\to {\pi }^{+}\gamma$.

• Received 28 October 1988

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.40.1497