Extraction of $\gamma$ from three-body B decays

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that three-body B decays, analyzed with flavor-SU(3) symmetry, can effectively extract the weak phase gamma, offering a promising alternative to traditional two-body decay methods.

Contribution

It applies a flavor-SU(3)-symmetric approach to three-body B decays, providing a new method for extracting the weak phase gamma from existing data.

Findings

Estimated gamma = (81^{+4}_{-5} ± 5) degrees.

Shows three-body B decays are a viable alternative for weak phase extraction.

Highlights the need to account for SU(3) breaking effects.

Abstract

The conventional use of two-body B decays to extract $\gamma$, although theoretically clean, is currently statistics-limited. On the other hand, a bulk of data on three-body B decays is available from $B$ factories. Applying the flavor-SU(3)-symmetric approach proposed in Ref.\ \cite{ReyLeLorier:2011ww} to \babar data, we find the highly promising result $\gamma = (81^{+4}_{-5} ({\rm avg.}) \pm 5 ({\rm std.\ dev.}))^\circ$. This establishes the use of three-body B decays as a viable alternative for the extraction of weak phases. In this preliminary analysis we have neglected several sources of uncertainties such as the effect of flavor-SU(3) breaking due to meson masses, and error correlations between input experimental parameters. A better understanding of these will improve the viability of this method.