Heavy [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] quarkonia are considered as systems confined within a hard-wall potential shaped after a linear combination of a cotangent — with a square co-secant function. Wave functions and energy spectra are then obtained in closed forms in solving by the Nikiforov–Uvarov method the associated radial Schrödinger equation in the presence of a centrifugal term. The interest in this potential is that in one parametrization, it can account for a conformal symmetry of the strong interaction, and in another for its perturbation, a reason for which we here employ it to study status of conformal symmetry in the heavy flavor sector. The resulting predictions on heavy quarkonia mass spectra and root mean square radii are compared with the available experimental data, as well as with predictions by other theoretical approaches. We observe that a relatively small conformal symmetry perturbing term in the potential suffices to achieve good agreement with data.
Heavy quarkonia in a potential model: binding energy, decay width, and survival probability