B decays into radially excited charmed mesons

Abstract

It has been recently argued that some longstanding problems in semileptonic B decays can be solved provided the branching ratio for the $B\to D^{\prime(\ast)}$ semileptonic decays are large enough. We have studied these decays in a constituent quark model which has been successful in describing semileptonic and non-leptonic B decays into orbitally excited charmed mesons. Our results do not confirm the hypothesis of large branching ratios for the $B\to D^{\prime(\ast)}$ semileptonic decays. In addition, we calculate the non-leptonic $B\to D'\pi$ decays which can provide an independent test of the form factors involved in the $B\to D^{\prime(\ast)}$ reactions.