B decays to baryons

Abstract

From inclusive measurements it is known that about 7% of all $B$ mesons decay into final states with baryons. In these decays, some striking features become visible compared to mesonic decays. The largest branching fractions come with quite moderate multiplicities of 3-4 hadrons. We note that two-body decays to baryons are suppressed relative to three- and four-body decays. In most of these analyses, the invariant baryon-antibaryon mass shows an enhancement near the threshold. We propose a phenomenological interpretation of this quite common feature of hadronization to baryons.