Hybrid Meson Potentials and the Gluonic van der Waals Force

The chromoelectric polarizability of mesons governs the strength of the gluonic van der Waals force and therefore of non-quark-exchange processes in hadronic physics. We compute the polarizability of heavy mesons with the aid of lattice gauge theory and the Born--Oppenheimer adiabatic expansion. We find that the operator product expansion breaks down at surprisingly large quarks masses due to nonperturbative gluodynamics and that previous conclusions concerning $J/\psi$--nuclear matter interactions and $J/\psi$ dissociation in the quark-gluon plasma must be substantially modified.