ISGUR-WISE FUNCTION FROM BETHE-SALPETER AMPLITUDE

We develop the improved ladder approximation to QCD in order to apply it to the heavy quark mesons. The resulting Bethe-Salpeter equation is expanded in powers of the inverse heavy quark mass 1/M, and is shown to be consistent with the heavy quark spin symmetry. We calculate numerically the universal leading order BS amplitude for heavy pseudoscalar and vector mesons, and use this to evaluate the Isgur-Wise function and the decay constant F(B). The resulting Isgur-Wise function predicts a large charge radius, rho2 = 1.8-2.0, which when fitted to the ARGUS data corresponds to the value V(cb) = .044-.050 for the Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element.