Penguin amplitudes in hadronic B decays: NLO spectator scattering

Abstract

We present results on the NLO (alpha_s^2) spectator-scattering corrections to the topological penguin amplitudes for charmless hadronic two-body B-decays in QCD factorization. The corrections can be sizable for the colour-suppressed electroweak penguin amplitudes alpha_{4,EW}^p but otherwise are numerically small. Our results explicitly demonstrate factorization at this order. To assess the phenomenological viability of the framework, we consider penguin-to-tree ratios in the penguin-dominated pi K system and find agreement to the expected precision (i.e., a power correction).