We analyze the overlap of local color-octet meson operators with the
Υ and the ηb and their low-lying excited states, especially the
first radial excitations. Our analysis is based on NRQCD and includes all terms
up to order v4. We use a variety of source and sink operators as a basis for
the variational method, which enables us to clearly separate the mass
eigenstates and hence to extract the desired amplitudes. The results show the
usefulness of the variational method for determining couplings to excited
hadronic states.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures, references added, typos fixed, further analysis
adde