Lifetime Ratios of Beauty Hadrons at the Next-to-Leading Order in QCD

Abstract

We compute the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to spectator effects in the lifetime ratios of beauty hadrons. With respect to previous calculations, we take into account the non vanishing value of the charm quark mass. We obtain the predictions tau(B+)/tau(Bd) = 1.06 +- 0.02, tau(Bs)/tau(Bd)= 1.00 +- 0.01 and tau(Lambdab)/tau(Bd) = 0.90 +- 0.05, in good agreement with the experimental results. In the case of tau(Bs)/tau(Bd) and tau(Lambdab)/tau(Bd), however, some contributions, which either vanish in the vacuum insertion approximation or represent a pure NLO corrections, have not been determined yet.

24 pages, 4 figures