B-decays in the heavy-quark expansion

Abstract

Progress in the theoretical description of B-meson decays, in particular decays to light hadrons, is reviewed. The factorization properties of such decays can be analyzed using the soft-collinear effective theory. Applications of the effective theory to both inclusive and exclusive decays are discussed.

Comments: Talk presented at the 15th Topical Conference on Hadron Collider Physics (Michigan State University, June 2004) and at the 11th International QCD Conference (Montpellier, July 2004). 14 pages, 4 figures