Z' Mediated Flavor Changing Neutral Currents in B Meson Decays

Abstract

We study the effects of an extra U(1)' gauge boson with flavor changing couplings with fermion mass eigenstates on certain B meson decays that are sensitive to such new physics contributions. In particular, we examine to what extent the current data on B_d -> \phi K, B_d -> \eta' K and B_s -> \mu^+ \mu^- decays may be explained in such models, concentrating on the example in which the flavor changing couplings are left-chiral. We find that within reasonable ranges of parameters, the Z' contribution can readily account for the anomaly in S_{\phi K_S} but is not sufficient to explain large branching ratio of B_d -> \eta' K with the same parameter value. S_{\phi K_S} and S_{\eta' K_S} are seen to be the dominant observables that constrain the extra weak phase in the model.