Flavor-Singlet B-Decay Amplitudes in QCD Factorization

Abstract

Exclusive hadronic B-meson decays into two-body final states consisting of a light pseudoscalar or vector meson along with an eta or eta' meson are of great phenomenological interest. Their theoretical analysis involves decay mechanisms that are unique to flavor-singlet states, such as their coupling to gluons or their ``intrinsic charm'' content. These issues are studied systematically in the context of QCD factorization and the heavy-quark expansion. Theory can account for the experimental data on the B->K^{(*)} eta^{(')} branching fractions, albeit within large uncertainties.