Pseudoscalar or vector meson production in non-leptonic decays of heavy hadrons

TL;DR

This paper develops a detailed angular momentum framework for analyzing non-leptonic weak decays of heavy hadrons, providing predictions that align well with experimental data and facilitating studies of meson and baryon production.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive angular momentum formulation for heavy hadron decays, enabling simplified calculations and predictions for various decay channels with improved theoretical-experimental agreement.

Findings

Good overall agreement with experimental data

Formulas useful for evaluating meson-meson and meson-baryon loops

Lays groundwork for three-particle decay studies

Abstract

We have addressed the study of non-leptonic weak decays of heavy hadrons ($\Lambda_b, \Lambda_c, B$ and $D$), with external and internal emission to give two final hadrons, taking into account the spin-angular momentum structure of the mesons and baryons produced. A detailed angular momentum formulation is developed which leads to easy final formulas. By means of them we have made predictions for a large amount of reactions, up to a global factor, common to many of them, that we take from some particular data. Comparing the theoretical predictions with the experimental data, the agreement found is quite good in general and the discrepancies should give valuable information on intrinsic form factors, independent of the spin structure studied here. The formulas obtained are also useful in order to evaluate meson-meson or meson-baryon loops, for instance of $B$ decays, in which one has PP, PV, VP or VV intermediate states, with P for pseudoscalar mesons and V for vector meson and lay the grounds for studies of decays into three final particles.