B Decays to Charmless VP Final States

Abstract

The CLEO Collaboration has now observed the decays $B^+ \to ωπ^+$ and $B \to ωK^+$ with branching ratios of $(1.1^{+0.6}_{-0.5} \pm 0.2) \times 10^{-5}$ and $(1.5^{+0.7}_{-0.6} \pm 0.3) \times 10^{-5}$, respectively. These are the first reported decays to charmless final states involving a vector (V) and a pseudoscalar (P) meson. The implications of these decays for others of B mesons to charmless VP final states are explored. In a model-independent approach, using only flavor SU(3) symmetry, several tests are proposed for an anticipated hierarchy among different contributions to decay amplitudes.