Electromagnetic Logarithms in B -> X_s l+ l-

Abstract

The B -> X_s l+ l- decay rate is known at the next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. It is proportional to alpha_em (mu)^2 and has a +- 4% scale uncertainty before including the O(alpha_em log(M_W^2/m_b^2)) electromagnetic corrections. We evaluate these corrections and confirm the earlier findings of Bobeth et al. >. Furthermore, we complete the calculation of logarithmically enhanced electromagnetic effects by including also QED corrections to the matrix elements of four-fermion operators. Such corrections contain a collinear logarithm log(m_b^2/m_l^2) that survives integration over the low dilepton invariant mass region 1 GeV^2 < q^2 < 6 GeV^2 and enhances the integrated decay rate in this domain. For the low-q^2 integrated branching ratio in the muonic case, we find B (B -> X_s mu^+mu^-) = (1.59 +- 0.11) 10^(-6), where the error includes the parametric and perturbative uncertainties only. For B (B -> X_s e^+e^-), in the current BaBar and Belle setups, the logarithm of the lepton mass gets replaced by angular cut parameters and the integrated branching ratio for the electrons is expected to be close to that for the muons.