Factorization and end point singularities in heavy-to-light decays

Abstract

We prove a factorization theorem for heavy-to-light form factors. Our result differs in several important ways from previous proposals. A proper separation of scales gives hard kernels that are free of endpoint singularities. A general procedure is described for including soft effects usually associated with the tail of wavefunctions in hard exclusive processes. We give an operator formulation of these soft effects using the soft-collinear effective theory, and show that they appear at the same order in the power counting as the hard spectator contribution.