We calculate the wave-functions, energy shifts and widths of low lying protonium states using different optical potentials (Dover-Richard, Kohno-Weise). The importance of tensor and isospin coupling is studied and the initial state distortion is compared for protonium annihilation and pp annihilation in flight at low energy. We study the range of distances at which annihilation actually occurs in protonium. We also analyse the effect of the initial state interaction on two meson branching ratios and underline that it may dramatically change the predictions of those microscopic models which are based only on phase space and simple quark diagrams.
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