Bound state studies in light-front QCD of mesons containing at least one heavy quark

We present a QCD bound-state calculation based on a renormalization group-improved light-front Hamiltonian formalism. The QCD Hamiltonian is determined to second order in the coupling, and it includes two-body confining interactions. We make a momentum expansion, obtaining an equal-time-like Schrodinger equation. This is solved for quark-antiquark constituent states, and we obtain a set of self-consistent parameters by fitting B mesons. Applying the approach to charmonium spectra leads to a prediction of the hyperfine splitting between J/$\psi$(1S) and $\eta_c$(1S) which is in good agreement with experiment.