Determination of the strong coupling $g_{B^* B\pi}$ from semi-leptonic $B\to \pi \ell \nu$ decay

TL;DR

This paper extracts the strong coupling constant $g_{B^* B o ext{pi}}$ from semi-leptonic $B o ext{pi} u ext{l}$ decay data using form factor parametrizations, testing their consistency with theoretical estimates.

Contribution

It provides a novel extraction of the strong coupling $g_{B^* B ext{pi}}$ from experimental decay spectra and compares different form factor parametrizations for consistency.

Findings

The extracted couplings from BK, BZ, and BCL parametrizations are consistent and agree with theoretical estimates.

The BGL parametrization yields a larger, less consistent value due to a spurious pole.

The method tests the validity of form-factor parametrizations in describing semi-leptonic decays.

Abstract

According to heavy-meson chiral perturbation theory, the vector form factor $f_+(q^2)$ of exclusive semi-leptonic decay $B\to \pi \ell \nu$ is closely related, at least in the soft-pion region (i.e., $q^{2} \sim (m_B-m_{\pi})^2$), to the strong coupling $g_{B^* B\pi}$ or the normalized coupling $\hat g$. Combining the precisely measured $q^2$ spectrum of $B\to \pi \ell \nu$ decay by the BaBar and Belle collaborations with several parametrizations of the form factor $f_+(q^2)$, we can extract these couplings from the residue of the form factor at the $B^*$ pole, which relies on an extrapolation of the form factor from the semi-leptonic region to the unphysical point $q^2=m_{B^*}^2$. Comparing the extracted values with the other experimental and theoretical estimates, we can test these various form-factor parametrizations, which differ from each other by the amount of physical information embedded in. It is found that the extracted values based on the BK, BZ and BCL parametrizations are consistent with each other and roughly in agreement with the other theoretical and lattice estimates, while the BGL ansatz, featured by a spurious, unwanted pole at the threshold of the cut, gives a neatly larger value.