Marching towards a Theory of Non-leptonic Decays of heavy-Flavour Hadrons"

Abstract

Theoretical descriptions for the nonleptonic decays of heavy flavour hadrons have emerged that incorporate non-perturbative corrections in a systematic way and are genuinely based on QCD. One can reproduce $τ(D^+)/τ(D^0)$, $BR_{SL}(D^+)$ and $BR_{SL}(D^0)$ as due mainly to destructive interference in $D^+$ decays; one predicts $τ(B^-)$ to exceed $τ(B_d)$ by a few per cent; $BR_{SL}(B)$ is reduced only slightly, raising the prospects of a serious and tantalizing conflict with ARGUS \& CLEO data. It is emphasized that the lifetimes for the two mass eigenstates in the $B_s$-$\bar B_s$ system could differ by 30\% or even more. The status of phenomenological treatments of non-leptonic two-body modes is briefly reviewed.