Angular momentum coefficients for meson strong decay and unquenched quark models

In most meson strong decay and unquenched (coupled-channel) quark models, the pair-creation operator is a scalar product of vectors in the spin and spatial degrees of freedom. While differing in the spatial part, most models have the same spin part, which creates a qq* pair coupled to spin triplet, with the spins of the initial quarks as spectators. This is a basic assumption of the 3P0 model, and is well-known to arise also in the flux tube model, starting from the strong coupling expansion of lattice QCD. In this article the same structure is shown to emerge in the Cornell model, in the dominant contributions of a more general microscopic decay model, and in the pseudoscalar-meson emission model. A solution is obtained for arbitrary matrix elements in these ``non-flip, triplet'' models, expressed as a weighted sum over spatial matrix elements. The coefficients in the expansion, which involve the spin degrees of freedom and the associated angular momentum algebra, are model-independent. Tables of the angular momentum coefficients are presented which can be used in future calculations, avoiding tedious Clebsch-Gordan sums. The symmetry and orthogonality properties of the coefficients are discussed, as well as their application to transitions involving hybrid mesons and states of mixed spin. New selection rules are derived, and existing ones generalised. The coefficients lead to model-independent relations among decay amplitudes and widths which can be tested in experiment and lattice QCD. They can also be used to explain how mass shifts in the unquenched quark model do not spoil successful predictions of the ordinary (quenched) quark model.