B-meson decays without charmed particles in the final state.

Abstract

We calculate B-italic-meson decay rates using the effective weak Hamiltonian, including leading-logarithmic strong corrections. We find that processes without charm particles in the final state are significantly enhanced by penguin-diagram contributions due to strong-interaction corrections. Branching ratios of these charmless modes are very sensitive to the QCD scale parameter, the energy scale of the interaction, and the decay constant of the B-italic meson. Comparisons of different schemes of finite renormalization effects due to decoupling of heavy particles are made. For realistic values of the parameters, branching ratios for the charmless hadronic decay modes of the B-italic mesons are from 1% to 5%. If the B-italic-meson decay constant f-italic/sub B-italic/ turns out to be larger than the theoretically favored values, then the charmless rate could be considerably bigger.