Heavy quarkonium spectrum and production/annihilation rates to order β03αs3

Abstract We compute the third-order corrections to the heavy quarkonium spectrum and production/annihilation rates due to the leading renormalization group running of the static potential. The previously known complete O ( m q α s 5 ) result for the heavy quarkonium ground state energy is extended to the exited states. After including the O ( α s 3 ) corrections the perturbative results are in surprisingly good agreement with the experimental data on the masses of the excited ϒ resonances and the leptonic width of the ϒ ( 1 S ) meson. The impact of the corrections on the ϒ sum rules and top quark–antiquark threshold production cross section is also discussed.