PRODUCTION, DECAY, AND POLARIZATION OF EXCITED HEAVY HADRONS

We discuss the production via fragmentation of excited heavy mesons an d baryons, and their subsequent decay. In particular, we consider the question of whether a net polarization of the initial heavy quark may be detected, either in a polarization of the final ground state or in anisotropies in the decay products of the excited hadron. The result h inges in part on a nonperturbative parameter which measures the net tr ansverse alignment of the light degrees of freedom in the fragmentatio n process. We use existing data on charmed mesons to extract this quan tity for certain excited mesons. Using this result we estimate the pol arization retention of charm and bottom baryons.