Rescattering and electroweak penguin effects in determinations of the weak phase $\gamma$

Abstract

Determinations of the CKM phase $\gamma$ from weak nonleptonic $B$ decays are affected by electroweak (EW) penguins and rescattering effects. In this talk it is explained how the EW penguin effects can be controlled with the help of SU(3) symmetry, by relating them to tree-level amplitudes. The impact of the final-state interactions on the determination of $\gamma$ from $B^+\to K\pi$ decays is studied numerically, showing that they can be important. A few alternative methods are discussed which use additional decays to eliminate their effects.