Nonspectator contributions to inclusive charmlessBdecays

Abstract

The light quarks inside B mesons are usually treated as spectators and do not affect the decay rates which are assumed to be purely due to b quark decays. In this paper we calculate the nonspectator contributions to inclusive charmless B decays due to the spectator effects. We find that the nonspectator contributions to the branching ratio for ${B}^{0}$ are small $(<2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}),$ but the contributions to $\ensuremath{\Delta}S=0$ and $\ensuremath{\Delta}S=\ensuremath{-}1,$ ${B}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ decay branching ratios can be as large as $\ensuremath{-}7.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}$ and $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}3},$ and can modify the main three-body spectator b decay branching ratios by 10% and 20%, respectively. These contributions may play an important role in rare charmless B decays.