Spectrum of heavy quarkonia in an instanton medium

The energy-level shift in heavy-quarkonium systems that is caused by fluctuations of vacuum gluon fields is estimated by simulating these fields by an instanton liquid. The use of the corresponding vacuum correlation function makes it possible to go beyond the dipole approximation. The width of energy levels with respect to decay to e ⁺ e ^? pairs is also given. It is shown that, both for bottomonium and for charmonium systems, an instanton medium can ensure a scale of shifts and widths of levels that is compatible with experimental data. In particular, it is indicated that a sizable logarithmic contribution at short distances is peculiar to the instanton vacuum.