The Bethe-Salpeter equation and leptonic decay constants for pseudoscalar and
vector quark-antiquark mesons with arbitrary quark masses are studied in
Coulomb gauge, under a leading order truncation. As input, we use a pure linear
rising potential, supplemented by a contact term arising from the conservation
of total color charge. It is shown how the equations can be written in terms of
manifestly finite functions, despite the infrared singular interaction. The
resulting equations are solved numerically. Both the pattern of dynamical
chiral symmetry breaking and the leading order heavy quark limit are visible.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure