The factorization-assisted topological-amplitude approach and its applications

TL;DR

This paper reviews the factorization-assisted topological-amplitude approach, a QCD-inspired framework for analyzing heavy meson decays, which effectively incorporates nonperturbative effects and flavor symmetry breaking to fit experimental data and make predictions.

Contribution

It introduces and summarizes a novel approach that combines factorization with topological amplitudes to study non-leptonic meson decays, addressing limitations of previous methods.

Findings

Successfully fits decay branching ratios and CP asymmetries.

Predicts CP asymmetries in D decays and mixing parameters.

Provides a comprehensive framework for nonperturbative QCD effects.

Abstract

Heavy meson decays provide an important platform for studies of both QCD and electroweak dynamics, which may contain some portals to understanding of nonperturbative QCD and physics beyond the Standard Model. The factorization-assisted topological-amplitude approach was proposed to study two-body non-leptonic $D$ meson decays, where a promising QCD inspired approach from first principles is still missing. It was also applied to $B$ meson decays whose subleading power contributions are difficult to calculate. By factorizing topological amplitudes into short distance Wilson coefficients and long distance hadronic matrix elements either to be calculated or to be parameterized, it provides an effective framework to extract information of nonperturbative dynamics involved. With important flavor SU(3) breaking effects taken into account, the data of the decay branching ratios (and also CP asymmetries in $B$ decays) can be fitted well. The extracted amplitudes were further applied to make predictions for other observables, such as CP asymmetries in $D$ decays, mixing parameters in the $D^0-\bar{D}^0$ system, and so on. By this review, we will describe the formulation of the factorization-assisted topological-amplitude approach and summarize its applications in $D$ and $B$ meson decays and highlight some of its achievements.