SLAC-PUB-11888 Rare hadronic B decays.

The study of rare hadronic B-meson decays with branching fractions O(10) enable us to probe a wide range of phenomena. Such decays can be used to probe our understanding of the CKM [1] description of quark mixing and CP violation (CPV ) in the Standard Model of Particle Physics (SM) by measuring all three of the Unitarity Triangle angles α, β and γ, as well as charge asymmetries in direct CPV ∆b = 1 transitions. CPV was first seen in the decay of neutral kaons [2]. The first observation of CPV in B-meson decay was the measurement of a non-zero value of sin 2β by the B-factories [3]. The measurements of the Unitarity Triangle angles and time-dependent CP observables (S and C) in hadronic B-meson decays are discussed elsewhere [4]. The phenomenon of direct CPV was experimentally established in the study of neutral kaon decay to two pion final states, through the measurement of a non zero value of the ratio ǫ/ǫ = (1.67 ± 0.26) × 10 [5, 6]. In contrast to the kaon system, where the direct CPV parameter ǫ is O(few× 10), one can accommodate large direct CPV in B-meson decay. For a B-meson decays to a final state f , the direct CP asymmetry is defined as