Intrinsic Charm of Vector Mesons: A Possible Solution of the "rho pi" Puzzle

An outstanding mystery of charmonium physics is why the J/\psi decays prominently to pseudoscalar plus vector meson channels, such as J/\psi -> \rho \pi and J/\psi -> K^*K, whereas the \psi'(2S) does not. We show that such decays of J/\psi and their suppression for \psi'(2S) follow naturally from the existence of intrinsic charm |qbar q cbar c> Fock components of the light vector mesons.