Long-distance effects and final state interactions in B to pion pion K and B to K anti-K K decays

Abstract

B decays into pion pion K and K anti-K K, where the pion-pion and anti-K K pairs interact in isospin zero S-wave, are studied in the pion-pion effective mass range from threshold to 1.2 GeV. The interplay of strong and weak decay amplitudes is analyzed using an unitary pion-pion and K anti-K coupled channel model. Final state interactions are described in terms of four scalar form factors constrained by unitarity and chiral perturbation theory. Branching ratios for the B decay into f0(980)K, calculated in the factorization approximation with some QCD corrections, are too low as compared to recent data. In order to improve agreement with experiment, we introduce long-distance contributions called charming penguins. Effective mass distributions, branching ratios and asymmetries are compared with the existing data from BaBar and Belle collaborations. A particularly large negative asymmetry in charged B decays is predicted for one set of the charming penguin amplitudes.