Distorted quarkonia and spin alignment

It is well-known that atoms can change their shape when subject to external electromagnetic fields. Analogous phenomenon is expected for particles, which are much smaller in size with the corresponding shape change much harder to observe. We point out that shape change of particles can be accessed by measurements of their spin alignment. Motivated by recent measurements of spin alignment in relativistic heavy ion collisions, we consider quarkonia in electromagnetic fields as an example. We show that the quarkonia spin alignment receives both spin contribution from spin states mixing and orbital contribution from shape change. By a proper choice of quantization axis, it is possible to switch off the spin contribution, leaving only the orbital contribution. This makes spin alignment measurement a valuable probe of quarkonium structure.