Lattice string breaking and heavy meson decays

We show how string breaking on the lattice, treated as a mixing effect, can br related to decay rates for heavy quark systems. We use this to make a p reliminary calculation of the energy split at maximum mixing for static qua rks in QCD from the decay rate for upsilon(4S) --> B (B) over bar. We exten d the calculation to achieve rough estimates fur the contributions of chann els involving B, B*, B-5, and B-5,* mesons to the width of the upsilon(5S). (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.