Hadrons of arbitrary spin and heavy quark symmetry

We present a general construction of the spin content of the Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes (covariant wave functions) for heavy hadrons with arbitrary orbital excitations, using representations of l x O(3, 1). These wave functions incorporate the symmetries manifest in the heavy quark limit. In the baryonic sector we clearly differentiate between the Λ and Σ-type excited baryons. We then use the trace formalism to evaluate the weak transitions of ground state heavy hadrons to arbitrary excited heavy hadrons. The contributions of excited states to the Bjorken sum rule are also worked out in detail. (author). 21 refs