Exclusive rareB→K*ℓ+ℓ−decays at low recoil: Controlling the long-distance effects

Abstract

We present a model-independent description of the exclusive rare decays $\overline{B}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{K}^{*}{e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ in the low recoil region (large lepton invariant mass ${q}^{2}\ensuremath{\sim}{m}_{b}^{2}$). In this region the long-distance effects from quark loops can be computed with the help of an operator product expansion in $1/Q$, with $Q={{m}_{b},\sqrt{{q}^{2}}}$. Nonperturbative effects up to and including terms suppressed by $\ensuremath{\Lambda}/Q$ and ${m}_{c}^{2}/{m}_{b}^{2}$ relative to the short-distance amplitude can be included in a model-independent way. Based on these results, we propose an improved method for determining the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element $|{V}_{ub}|$ from a combination of rare and semileptonic $B$ and $D$ decays near the zero recoil point. The residual theoretical uncertainty from long-distance effects in this $|{V}_{ub}|$ determination comes from terms in the operator product expansion of order ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s}(Q)\ensuremath{\Lambda}/{m}_{b}$, ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s}^{2}(Q)$, ${m}_{c}^{4}/{m}_{b}^{4}$, and duality violations, and is estimated to be below 10%.