Lectures on the Theory of Non-leptonic B Decays

Abstract

These notes provide a pedagogical introduction to the theory of non-leptonic heavy-meson decays recently proposed by Beneke, Buchalla, Sachrajda and myself. We provide a rigorous basis for factorization for a large class of non-leptonic two-body B-meson decays in the heavy-quark limit. The resulting factorization formula incorporates elements of the naive factorization approach and the hard-scattering approach, and allows us to compute systematically radiative (``non-factorizable'') corrections to naive factorization for decays such as B->D+pi and B->pi+pi.

Comments: 53 pages, 12 figures. Invited lectures presented at the Theoretical Advanced Study Institute (TASI 2000), Boulder, Colorado, June 2000, and at the 5th International Workshop on Particle Physics Phenomenology, Taitung, Taiwan, November 2000