Experimental Results on |Vcb| and b -> c l nu Transitions

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent experimental analyses of semileptonic B meson decays, focusing on extracting |Vcb| and measuring branching fractions to various D states, to improve understanding of decay mechanisms and background contributions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of recent measurements of |Vcb| and branching fractions from Babar and Belle, including analyses of ground and excited D states.

Findings

|Vcb| values obtained from inclusive and exclusive methods

Branching fractions to D, D*, and D** states measured

Excited D** states significantly contribute to decay width and background

Abstract

A review of recent analyses on semileptonic decays of B mesons into charmed final states is given. |Vcb| is extracted both by the Babar and the Belle collaboration from their datasets using inclusively and exclusively reconstructed final states. In addition there are recent results on the determination of exclusive branching fractions to the ground states D and D*, as well as to excited D** states. Those play an important role in understanding the composition of the total decay width. They represent also a sizable fraction of the backgrounds for exclusive analyses and are presented here as well.