QCD sum rules for heavy quark systems

In this paper we present in a detailed and coherent fashion our work on QCD sum rules for equal mass heavy quark meson states. We discuss the technical procedures used to calculate the perturbative and non-perturbative contributions to the vacuum polarization, which have been calculated for all currents up to and including spin 2⁺⁺. Using dispersion relations, sum rules are derived. Extensive applications are made to the lowest lying states of the charmonium and upsilon systems. The masses of the S- and P-wave charmonium levels are reproduced to a high degree of accuracy, and the mass of the ¹P₁ level is predicted at 3.51 GeV. For the upsilon system it only appears to be possible to predict the γ-η_b splitting which gives 60 MeV. Very accurate values are given for the current quark masses at p² = ?m_q²: m_c = 1.28 GeV and m_b = 4.25 GeV.