Exclusive Baryonic B Decays Circa 2005

Abstract

The status of exclusive two-body and three-body baryonic B decays is reviewed. The threshold enhancement effect in the dibaryon invariant mass and the angular distributions in the dibaryon rest frame are stressed and explained. Weak radiative baryonic B decays mediated by the electromagnetic penguin process $b\to s\gamma$ are discussed. Puzzles with the correlation observed in $B^-\to p\bar pK^-$ decay and the unexpectedly large rate observed for $B\to\Lambda_c\bar\Lambda_cK$ are examined. The former may indicate that the $p\bar p$ system is produced through some intermediate states, while the latter implies the failure of naive factorization for $\Lambda\bar\Lambda K$ modes and may hint at the importance of final-state rescattering effects.