Excited heavy meson decays to light vector mesons: implications for spectroscopy.

We analyze strong decays of excited charmed and beauty mesons into a light vector meson, exploiting the effective field theory based on heavy quark (HQ) symmetries for heavy mesons, and on the hidden gauge symmetry to incorporate light vector mesons. HQ symmetries allow to classify the heavy mesons in spin doublets, and to relate decays of excited states. We build effective Lagrangian terms governing the ${\cal H}_i \to P^{(*)} V$ modes, with ${\cal H}_i$ an excited $s$, $p$, $d$ and $f$-wave heavy-light quark meson, $P,\,P^*$ the lowest-lying $J^P=(0^-,\,1^-)$ heavy-light mesons, and V a light vector meson. Predictions are provided for ratios of decay widths that are independent of the strong couplings in the effective Lagrangian terms. A classification of the newly observed heavy-light mesons is proposed.