B decays to excited charm mesons

Abstract

We review several aspects of the phenomenology of P-wave $\bar q Q$ mesons: mass splittings, effective strong couplings and leptonic constants. We also describe a QCD sum rule determination to order $α_s$ of the form factor $τ_{1/2}(y)$ governing the semileptonic $B$ decays to the charm doublet with $J^P=(0^+_{1/2},1^+_{1/2})$.

LaTex, 3 pages, 1 figure. Talk given at 3rd International Conference on Hyperons, Charm and Beauty Hadrons, Genoa, Italy, 30 Jun - 3 Jul 1998