Heavy Meson Radiative Decays and Light Vector Meson Dominance

Electromagnetic interactions are introduced in the effective chiral Lagrangian for heavy mesons which includes light vector particles. A suitable notion of vector meson dominance is formulated. The constraints on the heavy meson -light vector and heavy meson-light pseudoscalar coupling constants are obtained using experimental $D^* \ra D \, \gamma$ branching ratios. These constraints are compared with values estimated from semi-leptonic transition amplitudes as well as from extension of the light meson coupling pattern. Application to the heavy baryon spectrum in the ``bound state " model is made.