Broken SU(3) Symmetry in Two-Body B Decays

Abstract

The decays of $B$ mesons to two-body hadronic final states are analyzed within the context of broken flavor SU(3) symmetry, extending a previous analysis involving pairs of light pseudoscalars to decays involving one or two charmed quarks in the final state. A systematic program is described for learning information {}from decay rates regarding (i) SU(3)-violating contributions, (ii) the magnitude of exchange and annihilation diagrams (effects involving the spectator quark), and (iii) strong final-state interactions. The implication of SU(3)-breaking effects for the extraction of weak phases is also examined. The present status of data on these questions is reviewed and suggestions for further experimental study are made.

38 pages, 8 figures, LaTeX file. The full postscript manuscript is available by anon ftp at ftp://lpsvsh.lps.umontreal.ca/theorie/hep-ph/SU3break.ps (a VAX so use the format theorie.hep-ph if you change by more than one directory at a time)